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Russia's new generation of Muslims
In the Russian heartland, young people are discovering spiritual fulfillment by turning to Islam, the religion of their Tatar ancestors.
Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam
Photo:
Rustam Sarachev, 21, is a self-described hooligan who first set foot in a mosque four years ago. "I had a choice," he says. "Either the street -- alcohol and cigarettes and all that stuff -- or a very pleasant atmosphere and pleasant people."
By Will Englund, Washington Post - Tuesday, December 21, 2010
ALMETYEVSK, RUSSIA.
Rustam Sarachev should have had a hangover the first time he set foot in the central mosque here. He had wanted to throw a raucous party the night before, a send-off for himself on his way to Islam. But the guys he was with had mocked him for even thinking about the mosque, and had gone off drinking on their own.
So here he was, regretfully clearheaded in the daylight, 500 rubles unspent on vodka and still in his pocket, heading up the steps of the big salmon-colored mosque that dominates one end of this minor oil city east of the Volga.
It was late September 2006, the beginning of Ramadan. As he looks back on it now, he remembers that he wasn't sure why he had decided to come, or what to expect. He was 17, at loose ends, a self-described hooligan, a troublemaker, starting to get hardened by a life that was heading for the verges of the law, yet still vulnerable to the insults and disdain that seek out young men with no future here.
When he walked through the great double door of the mosque, he was taking his first steps toward joining an intense Islamic revival here in the Muslim heartland of Russia that is drawing particular strength from its young people.
Sarachev was 2 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, 5 when the first war in Chechnya broke out, 12 on 9/11. His whole life has been an era of cataclysms, of an old world being torn apart, of war against Muslims, at home and abroad. Old identities, old certainties, have proved empty. And now he was joining others here of his own generation who are finding, in religion, an alternate authority. They are joining a global community, and at a time when great passions are stirring that community.
They learn at the mosque that Allah is punishing Iraqis for their heresies. They learn that 9/11 was carried out by American agents, or maybe agents from somewhere else, to provoke a war against Muslims. But they learn, too, that those who want to go and join the fight in Afghanistan, or Pakistan - and young men who aimed to do precisely that have passed through Almetyevsk - are in error. This is not the time. Islam needs them here, in Russia.
Their faith, in any case, is not ignited by politics. If it were, the Russian authorities would have cracked down on the mosque long ago. Sarachev came up those steps, on that day four years ago, not out of anger but in search of a way out of the pointlessness of his own life.
Built in the 1990s with Saudi backing, the mosque makes a strong physical statement. Inside, it features intricate woodwork, handsome red and green carpets and painstakingly assembled blue tile mosaics. On holidays, believers pack its services. During afternoon prayers, as they face to the southwest, toward Mecca, a window to their right might give them glimpses of a glorious pearly pink sky, otherworldly almost, even as the setting sun glints off the five golden domes of the Orthodox church across the way.
"I was shocked," remembers Sarachev. "I couldn't understand where I was. There were only young people, all around. They treated me so well. I'd never been welcomed like that before."
He saw familiar faces. Almas Tikhonov, who had been a big partier and a roughneck, and then had dropped from sight, was there, praying. Sarachev was impressed by the way Almas looked; there was a compelling serenity about him.
In the days that followed, that picture lingered in Sarachev's mind. He decided to go back to the mosque, and then again, and again. He had to endure the jibes of his old friends, and that was hard - but maybe it stiffened his resolve, too. As he began to see them in a new light, it made it simpler to give up the drinking, the hanging out on street corners, the sneaking off to a village where they could party all night, away from parents' eyes. Sarachev eventually came to understand that the world is full of devils, and that the duty of a good Muslim is to overcome those devils.
And somewhere here, he knows, though he's still working it through in his own mind, lies the meaning of jihad. "It's a struggle against those who don't believe," he says. "It's not a test. Jihad is a war."
Sarachev is a Tatar. His ancestors converted to Islam in the 9th century, when Tatarstan was a powerful state in its own right. For the past 450 years, the Tatars have lived under Russian domination; proud of their heritage, they consider themselves the natural leaders of Russia's 30 million Muslims.
But Sarachev's forebears didn't practice Islam the way he understands it today. Over a millennium, Tatars had developed a rich and complicated theology, comfortable with rational thought and mindful of the need to coexist with the Christian Russians. In Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, the religious establishment endeavors to carry on that tradition today.
But Soviet hostility to religion left most Tatars with only a perfunctory sense of their own Muslim inheritance. Growing up, Sarachev remembers, religion meant grandparents and holidays, and little else. Yet even then, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arab proselytizers had come to Tatarstan, and they were preaching a different sort of Islam - starker, simpler, more puritanical. It has taken root here, and it appeals powerfully to young people who, like Sarachev, are drawn to its order and rules, and to its purity.
Slow acceptance
Almetyevsk, a city of 150,000 with no history to speak of - it was founded in 1955 - lies among low brown ridges, a four-hour drive east of Kazan. It's not material poverty here that drives young Tatars to Islam, because oil and gas have brought prosperity, but a spiritual poverty in a country where every institution, from schools to hospitals to the police, is riddled with cynicism and corruption.
Sarachev's parents divorced when he was young. His mother works at a pipe factory; Sarachev has a job there now, too, operating a hydraulic press. He still lives at his mother's apartment.
When he embraced Islam he learned that everyone is born with an inner faith, "and it is the parents who turn a person away from religion." Not necessarily one's literal parents, he adds; it could be a metaphor for society. But it's little wonder that his own mother and father were unhappy with his religious awakening and rejection of the culture they lived in.
"They didn't understand," he says. "There were fights and quarrels. But of course they had been very mad at me when I was getting home late and drunk." So when they saw that that stopped, they started, slowly, to come around. Now, he says, if his mother sees him praying at home, she'll close the door and won't interfere. (She adamantly refused to be interviewed for this article.)
This year, for the first time, they gave him the money to buy a sacrificial sheep.
Nov. 16 was the day Muslims honored Ibrahim, who intended to slit his son Ismail's throat but sacrificed a ram instead. After an early-morning service at the mosque, a large crowd moved outdoors to a parking area for buses. Now it was filled with farmers' trucks, each carrying a dozen or so restless sheep. Under a damp sky, the chief imam, in a gray hat made from fetal lamb's skin, presided. With him stood the head of the city administration, the veterinary officer, and plainclothes leaders from the security services.
The sheep - more than 600 of them, each hobbled with three feet tied together - were carried to wooden pallets laid out on the ground, where their jugular veins were slashed. Blood flowed down gutters that ran the length of each pallet. At times a butcher would have to sit on an animal for a minute or more after its head was half severed, as it kicked and heaved.
Then the carcasses were skinned and cut into three equal parts: one for the purchaser, one for his relatives, and one for the poor.
"Those who cut a Muslim into three parts are much worse than those who cut a sheep into three parts," said the imam, Nail bin Ahmad Sakhibzyanov.
Sarachev went home happy, proud in the profession of his faith. The imam went home happy, too. It was the biggest slaughter yet in Almetyevsk.
Striving for faith
Sakhibzyanov, 53, studied to be an imam in what was then Soviet Uzbekistan. He says he dealt with the KGB agents who infiltrated religious schools in those days by telling them what they wanted to hear. What a man says, he suggests, is not necessarily what's in his heart.
Today, this is what Sakhibzyanov says: that his goal is to help Tatars regain their traditional religion. Yes, he studied in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and yes, the school he runs uses a Saudi curriculum. But naturally he subscribes to the Tatars' traditional Hanafi branch of Islam, he says; if he didn't, his school would lose its license. He only wants to help the wayward Tatars, buffeted by centuries of Russian and Soviet rule, find their way.
His opponents in Kazan say his Islam is Hanafi in name only, that it otherwise bears the hallmarks of its Arab - or Salafi - origins. They say its focus on Islamic purity is the flip side of intolerance toward other Muslims, and narrow-minded zeal.
"Almetyevsk is the center of Islamic radicalism in Russia," says Rafik Mukhametshin, rector of the Russian Islamic University in Kazan. "They're trying to return to a mythical Islam. And they're unpredictable because they refuse to learn from history."
Almetyevsk, he says, is the most dangerous spot in Russia.
And yet part of Islam's appeal for Sarachev was its promise of simple domestic happiness.
"I had a choice," he says. "Either the street - alcohol and cigarettes and all that stuff - or a very pleasant atmosphere and pleasant people."
Now, instead of partying, he plays on an all-Muslim rugby team. He drinks coffee instead of vodka, and where once he danced, now he likes to take walks. The job is just a job, but the pay allows him to spend convivial hours at the banya - the Russian sauna.
His new friends at the mosque have married, and they have jobs and kids and cars. Sarachev's aim is to live the good, respectable life. He sees Islam as the way to achieve it.
That's not exactly radical. But he knows, uneasily, that there's more to his Islam than that. Faith is difficult and much is demanded. Islam has powerful enemies, not only the non-believers who wage war on Muslims but also the devil that lives in everyone. Error is widespread, and Sarachev is keen to avoid it, if he can only be sure how.
Sakhibzyanov tells his followers that the struggle is between the soul and the brain - between faith, in other words, and thought. The Muslim must strive for faith.
If that's true, his detractors argue, it's no wonder the imam's Islam has such a strong appeal for those who learned their values on the street, in the with-us-or-against-us world at the margins of society.
But not every young worshiper here has that background. Guzel Sharipova, 23, was everything as a student that Sarachev was not; she studied chemistry on a full scholarship in Kazan, and graduated with highest honors. It was in Kazan that Islam found her, thanks to an Arab boyfriend. She was living with her great-aunt, Galima Abdullina, a retired schoolteacher, and began asking her about the prayers she recited. Eventually, she put on a veil.
"She was a girl who loved life, and suddenly she became so religious," says Enzhe Anisimova, Abdullina's daughter. "We watched her as a baby, and she was so beautiful, and spreading light. Now she's so serious. Islam is very close to me, but that doesn't mean that I accept everything. Something in it really attracts Guzel. But what is it? If she has found answers to the questions she was trying to find answers to, maybe that solved something for her."
Sharipova says, "Everyone has a time to come to Islam." She draws deep satisfaction from the rules it imposes. That frees up so much. She works now as a chemist - with her brain - but she gives her attention to her soul.
And where Sarachev hopes Islam will bring him modest comforts, Sharipova treasures the way it allows her to discard life's vanities. "I'm trying to spend time on only necessary things," she says.
New expectations
Rustam Sarachev came to the mosque knowing almost nothing about Islam. Now he knows that praying to ancestors, or saints, is the worst imaginable sin. He knows that being Muslim is more important than being a Tatar. He knows that the Russian special services don't like Islam because the alcohol and tobacco Muslims reject are big businesses. He knows those same special services dread the day when all people turn to Islam.
His ancestors, in centuries past, drank beer and mead at weddings and often sought the intercession of their forebears in prayer. Would Sarachev consider them Muslims if he met them today - or devils? In his earnest way, he's only beginning to deal with the difficult questions. He's happy that Islam is helping him find the answers.
"Everyone eventually asks, 'Why am I here? Why will I die? What will happen after I die?' You gradually start to understand who you are and why you were created."
It is, he says, to live a pure Muslim's life. And, through Islam, all is spelled out. "The prophet showed people everything - from how to go to the toilet to how to run a state." But there's still so much to get straight in his own mind.
Last year, Sarachev got to know some young men who wanted to pick up guns and go fight abroad. They weren't from the mosque. He thinks they had taught themselves Islam on the Internet. Sometimes, when they met on the street, they'd start urging him to go off and fight against Americans.
He says he was troubled by it, and as he describes it he still looks troubled by it. He's struggling to understand even now what's expected of him by his religion. He went to the mosque and asked the imams for advice.
They explained to him, he says, that these young men were mistaken. "Those people who say they want to fight, they're like foam on water. There's a lot of foam, but it's useless."
Eventually they went away, he doesn't know where. Sarachev, yearning to dig deeper into Islam, is still uncertain about jihad, and the fight against devils. "It's very complicated. I don't want to be wrong."
Sakhibzyanov knew about the would-be fighters. All Muslims, he says, know they are part of a larger community that must defend itself. But leaving Tatarstan to fight elsewhere is, he says, the wrong choice. "They are needed here."
The imam is a savvy navigator in a potentially hostile culture. Islam, he says, is a peaceful religion, violence is a sin and the task for Rustam Sarachev and other young Muslims is to keep studying and deepening their certainty in its purity and oneness. And then more will follow, and then more.
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1.1.11
Converting Why
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Why Do So Many Women Convert To Islam?
By Robert Bonnett, October 29, 2010
Well, strictly speaking that should be revert rather than convert, as everyone is, after all, born Muslim (apparently), but The Daily Mail recently asked “Why are so many modern British career women converting to Islam? ” so I’ve merely followed suit.
The newspaper, which is noted for its tolerance, respect and unbiased reporting of Islamic affairs had earlier published an article on Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth, who six weeks ago converted to Shia Islam following a spiritual experience in Iran and has, every day since, been reading the Qur’an within which she’s up to page 60 – yes that does equate to a staggering page and a half daily.
Islam’s status as the world’s fastest growing religion appears at odds with the general hostility towards it in the West, where aside from the belief that it fosters extremism is the perception of it as being distinctly misogynistic, which begs the question of why the majority of its new adherents are female.
The highly influential da’i and apologist Dr Zakir Naik, who’s currently banned from entering the UK thanks to his alleged extremist views (i.e. he compared Americans to terrorists), but whose literature and DVDs are legally and widely available for sale here, has said on the subject of women’s position in Islam that:
“The Western talk of women’s liberation, is actually a disguised form of exploitation of her body, deprivation of her honour and degradation of her soul . . . . The Western society which speaks of upgrading the status of women in Islam, has actually reduced her status to concubines, to mistresses, to society butterflies, which are mere tools in the hands of sex marketers and pleasure seekers, which are disguised behind the colourful screen of art and culture . . . . Women’s rights in Islam should be judged according to the authentic sources, and not what individual Muslims do, or what the Muslim society does . . . .”
“Islam’s radical revolutionary support gave women their due right and status in the days of ignorance 1,400 years ago . . . . Islam believes in equality of men and women. Equality does not mean identicality.”
Ermmm, I’m pretty sure it does – I am assuming, though, that being a neologism of sorts identicality means identical. And whilst Islam undeniably gave women rights when they had none, things have moved on a litle since then. Regardless, it would be easy to suggest that Dr Naik and other proselytisers have been remarkably successful in duping women into a vision of Islam which sees it as granting females an elevated rank in society – something that remains a debateable and subjective issue.
Such patronising thinking, though, assumes considerable ignorance and naivety on the part of the newly converted. Far from being submissive fools who’ve converted on a whim, the white, predominantly middle-class, successful career women to whom Islam often appeals usually fit the well-educated, thinker mould. Glossing over “celebrities” like Lauren Booth, whose sudden conversion is more likely the result of media whoring and taking up the latest fad than any serious religious enlightenment, the answer to why so many women embrace Islam is rooted in the dissatisfaction many hold towards current Western values.
The sexualisation of women, resulting – as far as many in the Ummah are concerned – from the feminist movement, which they view as a form of colonialism, has, together with irreverent attitudes and decadent, consumer driven and selfish lifestyles turned many Westerners towards alternative ways of living, amongst which is Islam. Spiritual beliefs to one side, the conservative moral values and strong sense of family and brotherhood/sisterhood present in Islam clearly appeal to many who are disillusioned with the status quo.
The question then of why so many modern British career women are converting to Islam is somewhat irrelevant. The important thing is that they choose to. No one forces them.
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Why Do So Many Women Convert To Islam?
By Robert Bonnett, October 29, 2010
Well, strictly speaking that should be revert rather than convert, as everyone is, after all, born Muslim (apparently), but The Daily Mail recently asked “Why are so many modern British career women converting to Islam? ” so I’ve merely followed suit.
The newspaper, which is noted for its tolerance, respect and unbiased reporting of Islamic affairs had earlier published an article on Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth, who six weeks ago converted to Shia Islam following a spiritual experience in Iran and has, every day since, been reading the Qur’an within which she’s up to page 60 – yes that does equate to a staggering page and a half daily.
Islam’s status as the world’s fastest growing religion appears at odds with the general hostility towards it in the West, where aside from the belief that it fosters extremism is the perception of it as being distinctly misogynistic, which begs the question of why the majority of its new adherents are female.
The highly influential da’i and apologist Dr Zakir Naik, who’s currently banned from entering the UK thanks to his alleged extremist views (i.e. he compared Americans to terrorists), but whose literature and DVDs are legally and widely available for sale here, has said on the subject of women’s position in Islam that:
“The Western talk of women’s liberation, is actually a disguised form of exploitation of her body, deprivation of her honour and degradation of her soul . . . . The Western society which speaks of upgrading the status of women in Islam, has actually reduced her status to concubines, to mistresses, to society butterflies, which are mere tools in the hands of sex marketers and pleasure seekers, which are disguised behind the colourful screen of art and culture . . . . Women’s rights in Islam should be judged according to the authentic sources, and not what individual Muslims do, or what the Muslim society does . . . .”
“Islam’s radical revolutionary support gave women their due right and status in the days of ignorance 1,400 years ago . . . . Islam believes in equality of men and women. Equality does not mean identicality.”
Ermmm, I’m pretty sure it does – I am assuming, though, that being a neologism of sorts identicality means identical. And whilst Islam undeniably gave women rights when they had none, things have moved on a litle since then. Regardless, it would be easy to suggest that Dr Naik and other proselytisers have been remarkably successful in duping women into a vision of Islam which sees it as granting females an elevated rank in society – something that remains a debateable and subjective issue.
Such patronising thinking, though, assumes considerable ignorance and naivety on the part of the newly converted. Far from being submissive fools who’ve converted on a whim, the white, predominantly middle-class, successful career women to whom Islam often appeals usually fit the well-educated, thinker mould. Glossing over “celebrities” like Lauren Booth, whose sudden conversion is more likely the result of media whoring and taking up the latest fad than any serious religious enlightenment, the answer to why so many women embrace Islam is rooted in the dissatisfaction many hold towards current Western values.
The sexualisation of women, resulting – as far as many in the Ummah are concerned – from the feminist movement, which they view as a form of colonialism, has, together with irreverent attitudes and decadent, consumer driven and selfish lifestyles turned many Westerners towards alternative ways of living, amongst which is Islam. Spiritual beliefs to one side, the conservative moral values and strong sense of family and brotherhood/sisterhood present in Islam clearly appeal to many who are disillusioned with the status quo.
The question then of why so many modern British career women are converting to Islam is somewhat irrelevant. The important thing is that they choose to. No one forces them.
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Meghan convert
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Meghan Walker
Meghan Walker is a junior at UW-Madison majoring in dietetics. She is a revert to Islam and is a transfer student from Butte College in Chico, California
Meghan Walker
Meghan Walker is a junior at UW-Madison majoring in dietetics. She is a revert to Islam and is a transfer student from Butte College in Chico, California
27.10.10
Lauren Booth
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Tony Blair's sister in law converts to Islam IN IRAN!
The Nation is shocked!!
News stories from media:
Tony Blair's sister-in-law converts to Islam
AFP - LONDON. The sister-in-law of former prime minister Tony Blair has converted to Islam following a visit to Iran, saying she is a "proud member" of the Muslim community.
Lauren Booth has given up alcohol and pork, prays five times a day and has not ruled out wearing a burqa in the future, she told The Mail on Sunday.
The 43-year-old journalist and reality television contestant underwent the religious conversion following a visit to the holy Iranian city of Qom six weeks ago.
She said that when she was in Iran, "I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy."
Speaking to the newspaper after a multi-faith Global Peace and Unity Event in London on Saturday, Booth said: "What I wanted to share with you today is that I am Lauren Booth and I am a Muslim.
"I always felt that the Ummah (Muslim community) is a very loving, peaceful place and I am proud to be a member of it."
Booth has frequently criticised her brother-in-law, accusing the former leader of being biased towards Israel and the United States in his role as Middle East peace envoy.
She wrote a scathing open letter in last month's far-left newspaper Morning Star.
"Personally I've never understood this fear of 'political Islam'," she wrote.
"It seems to me that religious people should always be educated on world events rather than kept in ignorance. Like, say, Midwest Christian Zionists in the US."
After attending a rally in Iran to mourn Palestinian deaths in cities including Rafah and Nablus, Booth wrote: "Do you recognise these place names, Tony?
"As Middle East envoy, you really should. Israel has massacred children in all of these cities. Didn't you know?"
She was refused entry to Israel and Egypt after travelling from Cyprus to Gaza on an activist ship which was protesting the blockade of Palestinian territory.
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Tony Blair's sister-in-law converts to Islam
Iran trip prompted journalist Lauren Booth to become a Muslim and wear a hijab
Helen Carter, The Guardian, Sunday 24 October 2010
Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted to Islam after having what she describes as a "holy experience" during a visit to Iran.
Journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, 43 – Cherie Blair's sister – now wears a hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque whenever she can.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.
"It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy," she said in an interview today.
When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.
LAUREN BOOTH'S CONVERSION TO ISLAM
By becoming a Muslim, Tony Blair's sister-in-law has made a clear political statement about the society she has rejected
Spiritual and political - Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a holy experience in Iran.
Andrew Brown - The Guardian, Monday 25 October 2010
There is quite a lot that could be said about anyone who converts to Islam in Iran under the impression that it is less inhumane than New Labour, but as a piece of theatre, Lauren Booth's conversion could hardly be beaten.
We tend to think of conversion as an essentially solitary or individual choice: the classic picture is the kind of "conversion experience" described in William James, and central both to evangelical Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous. But it is also always a political and social act, a statement about where you fit into the world. To convert is to announce your allegiance to a new tribe, or a new idea of humanity.
It is also, by implication at least, a rejection of your old self, and of the people who thought they recognised you in it. In this it is more like a divorce or a remarriage than any kind of intellectual experience. This is why it is a little silly to mock Lauren Booth for saying she has got up to page 60 of the Qur'an, after reading it every day. The conviction precedes the reading, and drives it along. Besides, how fast are you supposed to read a holy book? It's not as if you're trying to discover who dun it, only how He did it, and that is a study which can take a very long time. I might think her more sincere if she announced she was still on page one after three months.
But leave God out of this for the moment. Conversion always involves a conversation with the people around you, and just as with any other conversation, the meaning depends on where you are. To become a Muslim in Britain is a very different thing to becoming one in Indonesia, and in Argentina it's different again. This has absolutely nothing to do with doctrine. Baptists in the southern US can believe almost exactly the same things as Baptists in the Ukraine, but in one case baptism means you are becoming a normal person, and in the other that you are defining yourself as a weirdo.
In theory, all of the monotheistic religions try to stress the way in which true conversion moves you away from worldly things and into a relationship with God, rather than one with society. But in practice, most of the time, most people find their theological beliefs are a way of expressing their relationship with society. Disraeli could never have become prime minister had his father not converted from Judaism to Christianity. Even within Christianity, Margaret Thatcher found it necessary as part of her social rise to move from Methodism to Anglicanism.
To convert to Islam in a British prison is one way of expressing your disdain for the world outside, whereas conversion to Christianity is an attempt to come to terms with the dominant culture. To proclaim yourself an atheist in some parts of America is to invite derision, as much as it would be to announce in the BBC that you were a practising Calvinist.
Of course the consequence of conversion can be very much worse than derision. In almost all countries there is some religion that is regarded as treacherous almost in its essence. Much of the present tension in the US over Cordoba House comes from the attempts to define Islam as communism once was – an ideology that is incompatible with patriotism. But at least the American constitution works against such efforts in theory. Had Lauren Booth had a different mystical experience in Iran, and converted away from Islam rather than into it, she would have been liable to the death penalty.
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Why would Tony Blair's sister-in-law convert to Islam?
Telegraph - 25 October 2010
It was only a matter of time. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a dose of “spiritual morphine” in Iran, although she talks about the world’s fastest-growing religion like it was the latest version of the Atkins Diet:
“Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she said.
And she’s even refused to rule out wearing a burka: “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?”
Politically Booth has always struck me as being incredibly naïve, or willfully ignorant of reality. She writes:
"Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It’s kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths."
Presumably being a past contributor to the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece, Press TV, makes it easier for her to overlook Iran’s appalling human rights record, stories of widespread torture, rape and murder following last year’s rigged elections, its role in murdering dozens of dissidents across Europe, and its financing of various homicidal sectarian groups in Iraq.
I’ve written before about the fascination some middle-class Englishwomen have with Islam and the Arab world; the paradox is that many who convert come from progressive backgrounds and would be horrified at the idea of embracing Catholicism or one of the more conservative forms of Protestantism. And yet they’re prepared to adopt a religion far more traditional in its attitude to the sexes, and adopt an item of clothing that Middle Eastern women fought so hard and courageously to get rid of.
No doubt their Islam is partly a reaction to the excesses of the last 40 years, by people too programmed to oppose “Right-wing politics” to become conventionally conservative. Anyone who’s walked through a British city centre on a Friday night and contrasted the behaviour of the people serving the curry with the people eating it can see the attractions of a faith that emphasises family, duty and sobriety. And Islam is also attractive because it’s so demanding, asking great sacrifices of its followers.
But partly it is because Islam is, unlike any other faith, more than just a religion – it is also a political idea. And ever since the decline of socialism and Left-wing intellectuals’ abandonment of the working class, third worldist “anti-imperialism” has become the radical chic of choice, especially so with the Holy Land conflict. And what better way of embracing the politics of the 1968 generation than by submitting to Islam?
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Lauren Booth: I'm now a Muslim. Why all the shock and horror?
Lauren Booth...'How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem'.
News that Lauren Booth has converted to Islam provoked a storm of negative comments. Here she explains how it came about – and why it's time to stop patronising Muslim women
Lauren Booth
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 November 2010
It is five years since my first visit to Palestine. And when I arrived in the region, to work alongside charities in Gaza and the West Bank, I took with me the swagger of condescension that all white middle-class women (secretly or outwardly) hold towards poor Muslim women, women I presumed would be little more than black-robed blobs, silent in my peripheral vision. As a western woman with all my freedoms, I expected to deal professionally with men alone. After all, that's what the Muslim world is all about, right?
This week's screams of faux horror from fellow columnists on hearing of my conversion to Islam prove that this remains the stereotypical view regarding half a billion women currently practising Islam.
On my first trip to Ramallah, and many subsequent visits to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, I did indeed deal with men in power. And, dear reader, one or two of them even had those scary beards we see on news bulletins from far-flung places we've bombed to smithereens. Surprisingly (for me) I also began to deal with a lot of women of all ages, in all manner of head coverings, who also held positions of power. Believe it or not, Muslim women can be educated, work the same deadly hours we do, and even boss their husbands about in front of his friends until he leaves the room in a huff to go and finish making the dinner.
Is this patronising enough for you? I do hope so, because my conversion to Islam has been an excuse for sarcastic commentators to heap such patronising points of view on to Muslim women everywhere. So much so, that on my way to a meeting on the subject of Islamophobia in the media this week, I seriously considered buying myself a hook and posing as Abu Hamza. After all, judging by the reaction of many women columnists, I am now to women's rights what the hooked one is to knife and fork sales.
So let's all just take a deep breath and I'll give you a glimpse into the other world of Islam in the 21st century. Of course, we cannot discount the appalling way women are mistreated by men in many cities and cultures, both with and without an Islamic population. Women who are being abused by male relatives are being abused by men, not God. Much of the practices and laws in "Islamic" countries have deviated from (or are totally unrelated) to the origins of Islam. Instead practices are based on cultural or traditional (and yes, male-orientated) customs that have been injected into these societies. For example, in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive by law. This rule is an invention of the Saudi monarchy, our government's close ally in the arms and oil trade. The fight for women's rights must sadly adjust to our own government's needs.
My own path to Islam began with an awakening to the gap between what had been drip-fed to me about all Muslim life – and the reality.
I began to wonder about the calmness exuded by so many of the "sisters" and "brothers". Not all; these are human beings we're talking about. But many. And on my visit to Iran this September, the washing, kneeling, chanting recitations of the prayers at the mosques I visited reminded me of the west's view of an entirely different religion; one that is known for eschewing violence and embracing peace and love through quiet meditation. A religion trendy with movie stars such as Richard Gere, and one that would have been much easier to admit to following in public – Buddhism. Indeed, the bending, kneeling and submission of Muslim prayers resound with words of peace and contentment. Each one begins, "Bismillahir rahmaneer Raheem" – "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate" – and ends with the phrase "Assalamu Alaykhum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh" – Peace be upon you all and God's mercy and blessing.
Almost unnoticed to me, when praying for the last year or so, I had been saying "Dear Allah" instead of "Dear God". They both mean the same thing, of course, but for the convert to Islam the very alien nature of the language of the holy prayers and the holy book can be a stumbling block. I had skipped that hurdle without noticing. Then came the pull: a sort of emotional ebb and flow that responds to the company of other Muslims with a heightened feeling of openness and warmth. Well, that's how it was for me, anyway.
How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem. Why can't we cry in public, hug one another more, say "I love you" to a new friend, without facing suspicion or ridicule? I would watch emotions being shared in households along with trays of honeyed sweets and wondered, if Allah's law is simply based on fear why did the friends I loved and respected not turn their backs on their practices and start to drink, to have real "fun" as we in the west do? And we do, don't we? Don't we?
Finally, I felt what Muslims feel when they are in true prayer: a bolt of sweet harmony, a shudder of joy in which I was grateful for everything I have (my children) and secure in the certainty that I need nothing more (along with prayer) to be utterly content. I prayed in the Mesumeh shrine in Iran after ritually cleansing my forearms, face, head and feet with water. And nothing could be the same again. It was as simple as that.
The sheikh who finally converted me at a mosque in London a few weeks ago told me: "Don't hurry, Lauren. Just take it easy. Allah is waiting for you. Ignore those who tell you: you must do this, wear that, have your hair like this. Follow your instincts, follow the Holy Qur'an- and let Allah guide you."
And so I now live in a reality that is not unlike that of Jim Carey's character in the Truman Show. I have glimpsed the great lie that is the facade of our modern lives; that materialism, consumerism, sex and drugs will give us lasting happiness. But I have also peeked behind the screens and seen an enchanting, enriched existence of love, peace and hope. In the meantime, I carry on with daily life, cooking dinners, making TV programmes about Palestine and yes, praying for around half an hour a day.
Now, my morning starts with dawn prayers at around 6am, I pray again at 1.30pm, then finally at 10.30pm. My steady progress with the Qur'an has been mocked in some quarters (for the record, I'm now around 200 pages in). I've been seeking advice from Ayatollahs, imams and sheikhs, and every one has said that each individual's journey to Islam is their own. Some do commit the entire text to memory before conversion; for me reading the holy book will be done slowly and at my own pace.
In the past my attempts to give up alcohol have come to nothing; since my conversion I can't even imagine drinking again. I have no doubt that this is for life: there is so much in Islam to learn and enjoy and admire; I'm overcome with the wonder of it. In the last few days I've heard from other women converts, and they have told me that this is just the start, that they are still loving it 10 or 20 years on.
On a final note I'd like to offer a quick translation between Muslim culture and media culture that may help take the sting of shock out of my change of life for some of you.
When Muslims on the BBC News are shown shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" at some clear, Middle Eastern sky, we westerners have been trained to hear: "We hate you all in your British sitting rooms, and are on our way to blow ourselves up in Lidl when you are buying your weekly groceries."
In fact, what we Muslims are saying is "God is Great!", and we're taking comfort in our grief after non-Muslim nations have attacked our villages. Normally, this phrase proclaims our wish to live in peace with our neighbours, our God, our fellow humans, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Or, failing that, in the current climate, just to be left to live in peace would be nice.
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Why I love Islam: Lauren Booth defiantly explains why she is becoming a Muslim
By Lauren Booth - DAILY MAIL - 1st November 2010
It is the most peculiar journey of my life. The carriage is warm and my fellow passengers unexpectedly welcoming. We are progressing rapidly and without delay. Rain, snow, rail unions, these things make no difference to the forward rush.
Yet I have no idea how I came to be on board nor, stranger still, quite where the train is heading, apart from this: the destination, wherever it might be, is the most important place I can imagine.
I know this all seems gloriously far-fetched, but really it is how I feel about my conversion, announced last week, to Islam.
Although the means and mechanisms that brought me to this point remain mysterious, the decision will determine every aspect of my life to come as firmly as the twin rails beneath that exhilarating express.
Asked for a simple explanation of how I, an English hack journalist, a single working mother, signed up to the Western media’s least-favourite religion, I suppose I would point to an intensely spiritual experience in an Iranian mosque just over a month ago.
But it makes more sense to go back to January 2005, when I arrived alone in the West Bank to cover the elections there for The Mail on Sunday. It is safe to say that before that visit I had never spent any time with Arabs, or Muslims.
The whole experience was a shock, but not for the reasons I might have expected. So much of what we know about this part of the world and the people who follow Mohammed the Prophet is based on disturbing – some would say biased – news bulletins.
So, as I flew towards the Middle East, my mind was full of the usual 10pm buzzwords: radical extremists, fanatics, forced marriages, suicide bombers and jihad. Not much of a travel brochure.
My very first experience, though, could hardly have been more positive. I had arrived on the West Bank without a coat, as the Israeli airport authorities had kept my suitcase.
Walking around the centre of Ramallah, I was shivering, whereupon an old lady grabbed my hand.
Talking rapidly in Arabic, she took me into a house on a side street. Was I being kidnapped by a rather elderly terrorist? For several confusing minutes I watched her going through her daughter’s wardrobe until she pulled out a coat, a hat and a scarf.
I was then taken back to the street where I had been walking, given a kiss and sent warmly on my way. There had been not a single comprehensible word exchanged between us.
It was an act of generosity I have never forgotten, and one which, in various guises, I have seen repeated a hundred times. Yet this warmth of spirit is so rarely represented in what we read and see in the news.
Over the course of the next three years I made numerous journeys to the occupied lands which were once historic Palestine. At first I went on assignments; as time went by, I started travelling in solidarity with charities and pro-Palestinian groups.
I felt challenged by the hardships suffered by Palestinians of all creeds. It is important to remember there have been Christians in the Holy Land for 2,000 years and that they too are suffering under Israel’s illegal occupation.
Gradually I found expressions such as ‘Mashallah!’ (a phrase of gratitude meaning ‘God has willed it’) and ‘Al Hamdillilah!’ (akin to ‘Hallelujah’) creeping into my everyday speech. These are exclamations of delight derived from the 100 names of God, or Allah. Far from being nervous of Muslim groups, I started looking forward to meeting them. It was an opportunity to be with people of intelligence, wit and, above all else, kindness and generosity.
I’m going to take a break here to pray for ten minutes as it’s 1.30pm. (There are five prayers each day, the times varying throughout the year depending on the rising and setting of the sun.)
I was in no doubt that I had embarked on a change of political understanding, one in which Palestinians became families rather than terror suspects, and Muslim cities communities rather than ‘collateral damage’.
But a religious journey? This would never have occurred to me. Although I have always liked to pray and, since childhood, have enjoyed the stories of Jesus and the more ancient prophets that I had picked up at school and at the Brownies, I was brought up in a very secular household.
It was probably an appreciation of Muslim culture, in particular that of Muslim women, that first drew me towards a broader appreciation of Islam.
How strange Muslim women seem to English eyes, all covered up from head to toe, sometimes walking behind their husbands (although this is far from universally the case), with their children around their long skirts.
By contrast, professional women in Europe are happy to make the most of their appearance. I, for example, have always been proud of my lovely blonde hair and,
yes, my cleavage.
It was common working practice to have this on display at all times because so much of what we sell these days has to do with our appearance.
Yet whenever I have been invited to broadcast on television, I have sat watching in wonder as the female presenters spend up to an hour on their hair and make- up, before giving the serious topics under discussion less than 15 minutes’ attention. Is this liberation? I began to wonder just how much true respect girls and women get in our ‘free’ society.
In 2007 I went to Lebanon. I spent four days with female university students, all of whom wore the full hijab: belted shirts over dark trousers or jeans, with no hair on show. They were charming, independent and outspoken company. They were not at all the timid, soon-to-be-forced-into-marriage girls I would have imagined from what we often read in the West.
At one point they accompanied me to interview a sheikh who was also a commander with the Hezbollah militia. I was pleasantly surprised by his attitude to the girls. As Sheikh Nabil, in turban and brown flowing robes, talked intriguingly of a prisoner swap, they started butting in. They felt free to talk over him, to put a hand up for him to pause while they translated.
In fact, the bossiness of Muslim women is something of a joke that rings true in so many homes in the community. You want to see men under the thumb? Look at many Muslim husbands more than other kinds.
Indeed, just yesterday, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia rang me and only half-jokingly introduced himself as ‘my wife’s husband’.
Something else was changing, too. The more time I spent in the Middle East, the more I asked to be taken into mosques. Just for touristy reasons, I told myself. In fact I found them fascinating.
Free of statues and with rugs instead of pews, I saw them rather like a big sitting room where children play, women feed their families pitta bread and milk and grandmothers sit and read the Koran in wheelchairs. They take their lives into their place of worship and bring their worship into their homes.
Then came the night in the Iranian city of Qom, beneath the golden dome of the shrine of Fatima Mesumah (the revered ‘Learned Lady’). Like the other women pilgrims, I said Allah’s name several times while holding on to the bars of Fatima’s tomb.
When I sat down, a pulse of sheer spiritual joy shot through me. Not the joy that lifts you off the ground, but the joy that gives you complete peace and contentment. I sat for a long time. Young women gathered around me talking of the ‘amazing thing happening to you’.
I knew then I was no longer a tourist in Islam but a traveller inside the Ummah, the community of Islam that links all believers.
At first I wanted the feeling to go, and for several reasons. Was I ready to convert? What on earth would friends and family think? Was I ready to moderate my behaviour in many ways?
And here’s the really strange thing. I needn’t have worried about any of these things, because somehow becoming a Muslim is really easy – although the practicalities are a very different matter, of course.
For a start, Islam demands a great deal of study, yet I am mother to two children and work full-time. You are expected to read the Koran from beginning to end, plus the thoughts and findings of imams and all manner of spiritually enlightened people. Most people would spend months, if not years of study before making their declaration.
People ask me how much of the Koran I’ve read, and my answer is that I’ve only covered 100 pages or so to date, and in translation. But before anyone sneers, the verses of the Koran should be read ten lines at a time, and they should be recited, considered and, if possible, committed to memory. It’s not like OK! magazine.
This is a serious text that I am going to know for life. It would help to learn Arabic and I would like to, but that will also take time.
I have a relationship with a couple of mosques in North London, and I am hoping to make a routine of going at least once a week. I would never say, by the way, whether I will take a Sunni or a Shia path. For me, there is one Islam and one Allah.
Adopting modest dress, however, is rather less troublesome than you might think. Wearing a headscarf means I’m ready to go out more quickly than before. I was blushing the first time I wore it loosely over my hair just a few weeks ago.
Luckily it was cold outside, so few people paid attention. Going out in the sunshine was more of a challenge, but this is a tolerant country and no one has looked askance so far.
A veil, by the way, is not for me, let alone something more substantial like a burka. I’m making no criticism of women who choose that level of modesty. But Islam has no expectation that I will adopt a more severe form of dress.
Predictably, some areas of the Press have had a field day with my conversion, unleashing a torrent of abuse that is not really aimed at me but a false idea of Islam.
But I have ignored the more negative comments. Some people don’t understand spirituality and any discussion of it makes them frightened. It raises awkward questions about the meaning of their own lives and they lash out.
One of my concerns is professional. It is easy to get pigeonholed, particularly if I continue to wear a headscarf. In fact, based on the experience of other female converts, I’m wondering if I will be treated as though I have lost my mind.
I’ve been political all my life, and that will continue. I’ve been involved in pro-Palestinian activism for a number of years, and don’t expect to stop. Yet Britain is a more tolerant country than, say, France or Germany.
I’m well aware that there are plenty of Muslim women who have great success on television and in the Press, and wear modest but decidedly Western dress.
This is hardly a choice for me, though. I am a newcomer, still getting to grips with the basic tenets. My relationship with Islam is different. I am in no position to say that some bits of my new-found faith suit me and that some bits I’ll ignore.
There is a more profound uncertainty about the future, too. I feel changes going on in me every day – that I’m becoming a different person. I wonder where that will end up. Who will I be?
I am fortunate in that my most important relationships remain strong. The reaction from my non-Muslim friends has been more curious than hostile. ‘Will it change you?’ they ask. ‘Can we still be your friend? Can we go out drinking?’
The answer to the first two of those questions is yes. The last is a big happy no.
As for my mother, I think she is happy if I’m happy. And if, coming from a background of my father’s alcoholism, I’m going to avoid the stuff, then what could be better?
Growing up in an alcoholic household with a dad who was violent, has left a great gap in my life. It is a wound that will never heal and his remarks about me are very hurtful.
We haven’t seen each other for years, so how can he know anything about me or have any valid views about my conversion? I just feel sorry for him. The rest of my family is very supportive.
My mum and I had a difficult relationship when I was growing up, but we have built bridges and she’s a great support to me and the girls.
When I told her I had converted, she did say: ‘Not to those nutters. I thought you said Buddhism!’ But she understand now and accepts it.
And, as it happens, giving up alcohol was a breeze. In fact I can’t imagine tasting alcohol ever again. I simply don’t want to.
This is not the time for me to be thinking about relationships with men, either. I’m recovering from the breakdown of my marriage and am now going through a divorce.
So I’m not looking and am under no pressure to look.
If, when the time came, I did consider remarrying, then, in accordance with my adopted faith, the husband would need to be Muslim.
I’m asked: ‘Will my daughters be Muslim?’ I don’t know, that is up to them. You can’t change someone’s heart. But they’re certainly not hostile and their reaction to my surprising conversion was perhaps the most telling of all.
I sat in the kitchen and called them in. ‘Girls, I have some news for you,’ I began. ‘I am now a Muslim.’ They went into a huddle, with the eldest, Alex, saying: ‘We have some questions, we’ll be right back.’
They made a list and returned. Alex cleared her throat. ‘Will you drink alcohol any more?’
Answer: No. The response – a rather worrying ‘Yay!’
‘Will you smoke cigarettes any more?’ Smoking isn’t haram (forbidden) but it is harmful, so I answered: ‘No.’
Again, this was met with puritanical approval. Their final question, though, took me aback. ‘Will you have your breasts out in public now you are a Muslim?’
What??
It seems they’d both been embarrassed by my plunging shirts and tops and had cringed on the school run at my pallid cleavage. Perhaps in hindsight I should have cringed as well.
‘Now that I’m Muslim,’ I said, ‘I will never have my breasts out in public again.’
‘We love Islam!’ they cheered and went off to play. And I love Islam too.
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Tony Blair's sister in law converts to Islam IN IRAN!
The Nation is shocked!!
News stories from media:
Tony Blair's sister-in-law converts to Islam
AFP - LONDON. The sister-in-law of former prime minister Tony Blair has converted to Islam following a visit to Iran, saying she is a "proud member" of the Muslim community.
Lauren Booth has given up alcohol and pork, prays five times a day and has not ruled out wearing a burqa in the future, she told The Mail on Sunday.
The 43-year-old journalist and reality television contestant underwent the religious conversion following a visit to the holy Iranian city of Qom six weeks ago.
She said that when she was in Iran, "I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy."
Speaking to the newspaper after a multi-faith Global Peace and Unity Event in London on Saturday, Booth said: "What I wanted to share with you today is that I am Lauren Booth and I am a Muslim.
"I always felt that the Ummah (Muslim community) is a very loving, peaceful place and I am proud to be a member of it."
Booth has frequently criticised her brother-in-law, accusing the former leader of being biased towards Israel and the United States in his role as Middle East peace envoy.
She wrote a scathing open letter in last month's far-left newspaper Morning Star.
"Personally I've never understood this fear of 'political Islam'," she wrote.
"It seems to me that religious people should always be educated on world events rather than kept in ignorance. Like, say, Midwest Christian Zionists in the US."
After attending a rally in Iran to mourn Palestinian deaths in cities including Rafah and Nablus, Booth wrote: "Do you recognise these place names, Tony?
"As Middle East envoy, you really should. Israel has massacred children in all of these cities. Didn't you know?"
She was refused entry to Israel and Egypt after travelling from Cyprus to Gaza on an activist ship which was protesting the blockade of Palestinian territory.
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Tony Blair's sister-in-law converts to Islam
Iran trip prompted journalist Lauren Booth to become a Muslim and wear a hijab
Helen Carter, The Guardian, Sunday 24 October 2010
Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted to Islam after having what she describes as a "holy experience" during a visit to Iran.
Journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, 43 – Cherie Blair's sister – now wears a hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque whenever she can.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.
"It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy," she said in an interview today.
When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.
LAUREN BOOTH'S CONVERSION TO ISLAM
By becoming a Muslim, Tony Blair's sister-in-law has made a clear political statement about the society she has rejected
Spiritual and political - Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a holy experience in Iran.
Andrew Brown - The Guardian, Monday 25 October 2010
There is quite a lot that could be said about anyone who converts to Islam in Iran under the impression that it is less inhumane than New Labour, but as a piece of theatre, Lauren Booth's conversion could hardly be beaten.
We tend to think of conversion as an essentially solitary or individual choice: the classic picture is the kind of "conversion experience" described in William James, and central both to evangelical Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous. But it is also always a political and social act, a statement about where you fit into the world. To convert is to announce your allegiance to a new tribe, or a new idea of humanity.
It is also, by implication at least, a rejection of your old self, and of the people who thought they recognised you in it. In this it is more like a divorce or a remarriage than any kind of intellectual experience. This is why it is a little silly to mock Lauren Booth for saying she has got up to page 60 of the Qur'an, after reading it every day. The conviction precedes the reading, and drives it along. Besides, how fast are you supposed to read a holy book? It's not as if you're trying to discover who dun it, only how He did it, and that is a study which can take a very long time. I might think her more sincere if she announced she was still on page one after three months.
But leave God out of this for the moment. Conversion always involves a conversation with the people around you, and just as with any other conversation, the meaning depends on where you are. To become a Muslim in Britain is a very different thing to becoming one in Indonesia, and in Argentina it's different again. This has absolutely nothing to do with doctrine. Baptists in the southern US can believe almost exactly the same things as Baptists in the Ukraine, but in one case baptism means you are becoming a normal person, and in the other that you are defining yourself as a weirdo.
In theory, all of the monotheistic religions try to stress the way in which true conversion moves you away from worldly things and into a relationship with God, rather than one with society. But in practice, most of the time, most people find their theological beliefs are a way of expressing their relationship with society. Disraeli could never have become prime minister had his father not converted from Judaism to Christianity. Even within Christianity, Margaret Thatcher found it necessary as part of her social rise to move from Methodism to Anglicanism.
To convert to Islam in a British prison is one way of expressing your disdain for the world outside, whereas conversion to Christianity is an attempt to come to terms with the dominant culture. To proclaim yourself an atheist in some parts of America is to invite derision, as much as it would be to announce in the BBC that you were a practising Calvinist.
Of course the consequence of conversion can be very much worse than derision. In almost all countries there is some religion that is regarded as treacherous almost in its essence. Much of the present tension in the US over Cordoba House comes from the attempts to define Islam as communism once was – an ideology that is incompatible with patriotism. But at least the American constitution works against such efforts in theory. Had Lauren Booth had a different mystical experience in Iran, and converted away from Islam rather than into it, she would have been liable to the death penalty.
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Why would Tony Blair's sister-in-law convert to Islam?
Telegraph - 25 October 2010
It was only a matter of time. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a dose of “spiritual morphine” in Iran, although she talks about the world’s fastest-growing religion like it was the latest version of the Atkins Diet:
“Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she said.
And she’s even refused to rule out wearing a burka: “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?”
Politically Booth has always struck me as being incredibly naïve, or willfully ignorant of reality. She writes:
"Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It’s kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths."
Presumably being a past contributor to the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece, Press TV, makes it easier for her to overlook Iran’s appalling human rights record, stories of widespread torture, rape and murder following last year’s rigged elections, its role in murdering dozens of dissidents across Europe, and its financing of various homicidal sectarian groups in Iraq.
I’ve written before about the fascination some middle-class Englishwomen have with Islam and the Arab world; the paradox is that many who convert come from progressive backgrounds and would be horrified at the idea of embracing Catholicism or one of the more conservative forms of Protestantism. And yet they’re prepared to adopt a religion far more traditional in its attitude to the sexes, and adopt an item of clothing that Middle Eastern women fought so hard and courageously to get rid of.
No doubt their Islam is partly a reaction to the excesses of the last 40 years, by people too programmed to oppose “Right-wing politics” to become conventionally conservative. Anyone who’s walked through a British city centre on a Friday night and contrasted the behaviour of the people serving the curry with the people eating it can see the attractions of a faith that emphasises family, duty and sobriety. And Islam is also attractive because it’s so demanding, asking great sacrifices of its followers.
But partly it is because Islam is, unlike any other faith, more than just a religion – it is also a political idea. And ever since the decline of socialism and Left-wing intellectuals’ abandonment of the working class, third worldist “anti-imperialism” has become the radical chic of choice, especially so with the Holy Land conflict. And what better way of embracing the politics of the 1968 generation than by submitting to Islam?
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Lauren Booth: I'm now a Muslim. Why all the shock and horror?
Lauren Booth...'How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem'.
News that Lauren Booth has converted to Islam provoked a storm of negative comments. Here she explains how it came about – and why it's time to stop patronising Muslim women
Lauren Booth
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 November 2010
It is five years since my first visit to Palestine. And when I arrived in the region, to work alongside charities in Gaza and the West Bank, I took with me the swagger of condescension that all white middle-class women (secretly or outwardly) hold towards poor Muslim women, women I presumed would be little more than black-robed blobs, silent in my peripheral vision. As a western woman with all my freedoms, I expected to deal professionally with men alone. After all, that's what the Muslim world is all about, right?
This week's screams of faux horror from fellow columnists on hearing of my conversion to Islam prove that this remains the stereotypical view regarding half a billion women currently practising Islam.
On my first trip to Ramallah, and many subsequent visits to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, I did indeed deal with men in power. And, dear reader, one or two of them even had those scary beards we see on news bulletins from far-flung places we've bombed to smithereens. Surprisingly (for me) I also began to deal with a lot of women of all ages, in all manner of head coverings, who also held positions of power. Believe it or not, Muslim women can be educated, work the same deadly hours we do, and even boss their husbands about in front of his friends until he leaves the room in a huff to go and finish making the dinner.
Is this patronising enough for you? I do hope so, because my conversion to Islam has been an excuse for sarcastic commentators to heap such patronising points of view on to Muslim women everywhere. So much so, that on my way to a meeting on the subject of Islamophobia in the media this week, I seriously considered buying myself a hook and posing as Abu Hamza. After all, judging by the reaction of many women columnists, I am now to women's rights what the hooked one is to knife and fork sales.
So let's all just take a deep breath and I'll give you a glimpse into the other world of Islam in the 21st century. Of course, we cannot discount the appalling way women are mistreated by men in many cities and cultures, both with and without an Islamic population. Women who are being abused by male relatives are being abused by men, not God. Much of the practices and laws in "Islamic" countries have deviated from (or are totally unrelated) to the origins of Islam. Instead practices are based on cultural or traditional (and yes, male-orientated) customs that have been injected into these societies. For example, in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive by law. This rule is an invention of the Saudi monarchy, our government's close ally in the arms and oil trade. The fight for women's rights must sadly adjust to our own government's needs.
My own path to Islam began with an awakening to the gap between what had been drip-fed to me about all Muslim life – and the reality.
I began to wonder about the calmness exuded by so many of the "sisters" and "brothers". Not all; these are human beings we're talking about. But many. And on my visit to Iran this September, the washing, kneeling, chanting recitations of the prayers at the mosques I visited reminded me of the west's view of an entirely different religion; one that is known for eschewing violence and embracing peace and love through quiet meditation. A religion trendy with movie stars such as Richard Gere, and one that would have been much easier to admit to following in public – Buddhism. Indeed, the bending, kneeling and submission of Muslim prayers resound with words of peace and contentment. Each one begins, "Bismillahir rahmaneer Raheem" – "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate" – and ends with the phrase "Assalamu Alaykhum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh" – Peace be upon you all and God's mercy and blessing.
Almost unnoticed to me, when praying for the last year or so, I had been saying "Dear Allah" instead of "Dear God". They both mean the same thing, of course, but for the convert to Islam the very alien nature of the language of the holy prayers and the holy book can be a stumbling block. I had skipped that hurdle without noticing. Then came the pull: a sort of emotional ebb and flow that responds to the company of other Muslims with a heightened feeling of openness and warmth. Well, that's how it was for me, anyway.
How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem. Why can't we cry in public, hug one another more, say "I love you" to a new friend, without facing suspicion or ridicule? I would watch emotions being shared in households along with trays of honeyed sweets and wondered, if Allah's law is simply based on fear why did the friends I loved and respected not turn their backs on their practices and start to drink, to have real "fun" as we in the west do? And we do, don't we? Don't we?
Finally, I felt what Muslims feel when they are in true prayer: a bolt of sweet harmony, a shudder of joy in which I was grateful for everything I have (my children) and secure in the certainty that I need nothing more (along with prayer) to be utterly content. I prayed in the Mesumeh shrine in Iran after ritually cleansing my forearms, face, head and feet with water. And nothing could be the same again. It was as simple as that.
The sheikh who finally converted me at a mosque in London a few weeks ago told me: "Don't hurry, Lauren. Just take it easy. Allah is waiting for you. Ignore those who tell you: you must do this, wear that, have your hair like this. Follow your instincts, follow the Holy Qur'an- and let Allah guide you."
And so I now live in a reality that is not unlike that of Jim Carey's character in the Truman Show. I have glimpsed the great lie that is the facade of our modern lives; that materialism, consumerism, sex and drugs will give us lasting happiness. But I have also peeked behind the screens and seen an enchanting, enriched existence of love, peace and hope. In the meantime, I carry on with daily life, cooking dinners, making TV programmes about Palestine and yes, praying for around half an hour a day.
Now, my morning starts with dawn prayers at around 6am, I pray again at 1.30pm, then finally at 10.30pm. My steady progress with the Qur'an has been mocked in some quarters (for the record, I'm now around 200 pages in). I've been seeking advice from Ayatollahs, imams and sheikhs, and every one has said that each individual's journey to Islam is their own. Some do commit the entire text to memory before conversion; for me reading the holy book will be done slowly and at my own pace.
In the past my attempts to give up alcohol have come to nothing; since my conversion I can't even imagine drinking again. I have no doubt that this is for life: there is so much in Islam to learn and enjoy and admire; I'm overcome with the wonder of it. In the last few days I've heard from other women converts, and they have told me that this is just the start, that they are still loving it 10 or 20 years on.
On a final note I'd like to offer a quick translation between Muslim culture and media culture that may help take the sting of shock out of my change of life for some of you.
When Muslims on the BBC News are shown shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" at some clear, Middle Eastern sky, we westerners have been trained to hear: "We hate you all in your British sitting rooms, and are on our way to blow ourselves up in Lidl when you are buying your weekly groceries."
In fact, what we Muslims are saying is "God is Great!", and we're taking comfort in our grief after non-Muslim nations have attacked our villages. Normally, this phrase proclaims our wish to live in peace with our neighbours, our God, our fellow humans, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Or, failing that, in the current climate, just to be left to live in peace would be nice.
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Why I love Islam: Lauren Booth defiantly explains why she is becoming a Muslim
By Lauren Booth - DAILY MAIL - 1st November 2010
It is the most peculiar journey of my life. The carriage is warm and my fellow passengers unexpectedly welcoming. We are progressing rapidly and without delay. Rain, snow, rail unions, these things make no difference to the forward rush.
Yet I have no idea how I came to be on board nor, stranger still, quite where the train is heading, apart from this: the destination, wherever it might be, is the most important place I can imagine.
I know this all seems gloriously far-fetched, but really it is how I feel about my conversion, announced last week, to Islam.
Although the means and mechanisms that brought me to this point remain mysterious, the decision will determine every aspect of my life to come as firmly as the twin rails beneath that exhilarating express.
Asked for a simple explanation of how I, an English hack journalist, a single working mother, signed up to the Western media’s least-favourite religion, I suppose I would point to an intensely spiritual experience in an Iranian mosque just over a month ago.
But it makes more sense to go back to January 2005, when I arrived alone in the West Bank to cover the elections there for The Mail on Sunday. It is safe to say that before that visit I had never spent any time with Arabs, or Muslims.
The whole experience was a shock, but not for the reasons I might have expected. So much of what we know about this part of the world and the people who follow Mohammed the Prophet is based on disturbing – some would say biased – news bulletins.
So, as I flew towards the Middle East, my mind was full of the usual 10pm buzzwords: radical extremists, fanatics, forced marriages, suicide bombers and jihad. Not much of a travel brochure.
My very first experience, though, could hardly have been more positive. I had arrived on the West Bank without a coat, as the Israeli airport authorities had kept my suitcase.
Walking around the centre of Ramallah, I was shivering, whereupon an old lady grabbed my hand.
Talking rapidly in Arabic, she took me into a house on a side street. Was I being kidnapped by a rather elderly terrorist? For several confusing minutes I watched her going through her daughter’s wardrobe until she pulled out a coat, a hat and a scarf.
I was then taken back to the street where I had been walking, given a kiss and sent warmly on my way. There had been not a single comprehensible word exchanged between us.
It was an act of generosity I have never forgotten, and one which, in various guises, I have seen repeated a hundred times. Yet this warmth of spirit is so rarely represented in what we read and see in the news.
Over the course of the next three years I made numerous journeys to the occupied lands which were once historic Palestine. At first I went on assignments; as time went by, I started travelling in solidarity with charities and pro-Palestinian groups.
I felt challenged by the hardships suffered by Palestinians of all creeds. It is important to remember there have been Christians in the Holy Land for 2,000 years and that they too are suffering under Israel’s illegal occupation.
Gradually I found expressions such as ‘Mashallah!’ (a phrase of gratitude meaning ‘God has willed it’) and ‘Al Hamdillilah!’ (akin to ‘Hallelujah’) creeping into my everyday speech. These are exclamations of delight derived from the 100 names of God, or Allah. Far from being nervous of Muslim groups, I started looking forward to meeting them. It was an opportunity to be with people of intelligence, wit and, above all else, kindness and generosity.
I’m going to take a break here to pray for ten minutes as it’s 1.30pm. (There are five prayers each day, the times varying throughout the year depending on the rising and setting of the sun.)
I was in no doubt that I had embarked on a change of political understanding, one in which Palestinians became families rather than terror suspects, and Muslim cities communities rather than ‘collateral damage’.
But a religious journey? This would never have occurred to me. Although I have always liked to pray and, since childhood, have enjoyed the stories of Jesus and the more ancient prophets that I had picked up at school and at the Brownies, I was brought up in a very secular household.
It was probably an appreciation of Muslim culture, in particular that of Muslim women, that first drew me towards a broader appreciation of Islam.
How strange Muslim women seem to English eyes, all covered up from head to toe, sometimes walking behind their husbands (although this is far from universally the case), with their children around their long skirts.
By contrast, professional women in Europe are happy to make the most of their appearance. I, for example, have always been proud of my lovely blonde hair and,
yes, my cleavage.
It was common working practice to have this on display at all times because so much of what we sell these days has to do with our appearance.
Yet whenever I have been invited to broadcast on television, I have sat watching in wonder as the female presenters spend up to an hour on their hair and make- up, before giving the serious topics under discussion less than 15 minutes’ attention. Is this liberation? I began to wonder just how much true respect girls and women get in our ‘free’ society.
In 2007 I went to Lebanon. I spent four days with female university students, all of whom wore the full hijab: belted shirts over dark trousers or jeans, with no hair on show. They were charming, independent and outspoken company. They were not at all the timid, soon-to-be-forced-into-marriage girls I would have imagined from what we often read in the West.
At one point they accompanied me to interview a sheikh who was also a commander with the Hezbollah militia. I was pleasantly surprised by his attitude to the girls. As Sheikh Nabil, in turban and brown flowing robes, talked intriguingly of a prisoner swap, they started butting in. They felt free to talk over him, to put a hand up for him to pause while they translated.
In fact, the bossiness of Muslim women is something of a joke that rings true in so many homes in the community. You want to see men under the thumb? Look at many Muslim husbands more than other kinds.
Indeed, just yesterday, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia rang me and only half-jokingly introduced himself as ‘my wife’s husband’.
Something else was changing, too. The more time I spent in the Middle East, the more I asked to be taken into mosques. Just for touristy reasons, I told myself. In fact I found them fascinating.
Free of statues and with rugs instead of pews, I saw them rather like a big sitting room where children play, women feed their families pitta bread and milk and grandmothers sit and read the Koran in wheelchairs. They take their lives into their place of worship and bring their worship into their homes.
Then came the night in the Iranian city of Qom, beneath the golden dome of the shrine of Fatima Mesumah (the revered ‘Learned Lady’). Like the other women pilgrims, I said Allah’s name several times while holding on to the bars of Fatima’s tomb.
When I sat down, a pulse of sheer spiritual joy shot through me. Not the joy that lifts you off the ground, but the joy that gives you complete peace and contentment. I sat for a long time. Young women gathered around me talking of the ‘amazing thing happening to you’.
I knew then I was no longer a tourist in Islam but a traveller inside the Ummah, the community of Islam that links all believers.
At first I wanted the feeling to go, and for several reasons. Was I ready to convert? What on earth would friends and family think? Was I ready to moderate my behaviour in many ways?
And here’s the really strange thing. I needn’t have worried about any of these things, because somehow becoming a Muslim is really easy – although the practicalities are a very different matter, of course.
For a start, Islam demands a great deal of study, yet I am mother to two children and work full-time. You are expected to read the Koran from beginning to end, plus the thoughts and findings of imams and all manner of spiritually enlightened people. Most people would spend months, if not years of study before making their declaration.
People ask me how much of the Koran I’ve read, and my answer is that I’ve only covered 100 pages or so to date, and in translation. But before anyone sneers, the verses of the Koran should be read ten lines at a time, and they should be recited, considered and, if possible, committed to memory. It’s not like OK! magazine.
This is a serious text that I am going to know for life. It would help to learn Arabic and I would like to, but that will also take time.
I have a relationship with a couple of mosques in North London, and I am hoping to make a routine of going at least once a week. I would never say, by the way, whether I will take a Sunni or a Shia path. For me, there is one Islam and one Allah.
Adopting modest dress, however, is rather less troublesome than you might think. Wearing a headscarf means I’m ready to go out more quickly than before. I was blushing the first time I wore it loosely over my hair just a few weeks ago.
Luckily it was cold outside, so few people paid attention. Going out in the sunshine was more of a challenge, but this is a tolerant country and no one has looked askance so far.
A veil, by the way, is not for me, let alone something more substantial like a burka. I’m making no criticism of women who choose that level of modesty. But Islam has no expectation that I will adopt a more severe form of dress.
Predictably, some areas of the Press have had a field day with my conversion, unleashing a torrent of abuse that is not really aimed at me but a false idea of Islam.
But I have ignored the more negative comments. Some people don’t understand spirituality and any discussion of it makes them frightened. It raises awkward questions about the meaning of their own lives and they lash out.
One of my concerns is professional. It is easy to get pigeonholed, particularly if I continue to wear a headscarf. In fact, based on the experience of other female converts, I’m wondering if I will be treated as though I have lost my mind.
I’ve been political all my life, and that will continue. I’ve been involved in pro-Palestinian activism for a number of years, and don’t expect to stop. Yet Britain is a more tolerant country than, say, France or Germany.
I’m well aware that there are plenty of Muslim women who have great success on television and in the Press, and wear modest but decidedly Western dress.
This is hardly a choice for me, though. I am a newcomer, still getting to grips with the basic tenets. My relationship with Islam is different. I am in no position to say that some bits of my new-found faith suit me and that some bits I’ll ignore.
There is a more profound uncertainty about the future, too. I feel changes going on in me every day – that I’m becoming a different person. I wonder where that will end up. Who will I be?
I am fortunate in that my most important relationships remain strong. The reaction from my non-Muslim friends has been more curious than hostile. ‘Will it change you?’ they ask. ‘Can we still be your friend? Can we go out drinking?’
The answer to the first two of those questions is yes. The last is a big happy no.
As for my mother, I think she is happy if I’m happy. And if, coming from a background of my father’s alcoholism, I’m going to avoid the stuff, then what could be better?
Growing up in an alcoholic household with a dad who was violent, has left a great gap in my life. It is a wound that will never heal and his remarks about me are very hurtful.
We haven’t seen each other for years, so how can he know anything about me or have any valid views about my conversion? I just feel sorry for him. The rest of my family is very supportive.
My mum and I had a difficult relationship when I was growing up, but we have built bridges and she’s a great support to me and the girls.
When I told her I had converted, she did say: ‘Not to those nutters. I thought you said Buddhism!’ But she understand now and accepts it.
And, as it happens, giving up alcohol was a breeze. In fact I can’t imagine tasting alcohol ever again. I simply don’t want to.
This is not the time for me to be thinking about relationships with men, either. I’m recovering from the breakdown of my marriage and am now going through a divorce.
So I’m not looking and am under no pressure to look.
If, when the time came, I did consider remarrying, then, in accordance with my adopted faith, the husband would need to be Muslim.
I’m asked: ‘Will my daughters be Muslim?’ I don’t know, that is up to them. You can’t change someone’s heart. But they’re certainly not hostile and their reaction to my surprising conversion was perhaps the most telling of all.
I sat in the kitchen and called them in. ‘Girls, I have some news for you,’ I began. ‘I am now a Muslim.’ They went into a huddle, with the eldest, Alex, saying: ‘We have some questions, we’ll be right back.’
They made a list and returned. Alex cleared her throat. ‘Will you drink alcohol any more?’
Answer: No. The response – a rather worrying ‘Yay!’
‘Will you smoke cigarettes any more?’ Smoking isn’t haram (forbidden) but it is harmful, so I answered: ‘No.’
Again, this was met with puritanical approval. Their final question, though, took me aback. ‘Will you have your breasts out in public now you are a Muslim?’
What??
It seems they’d both been embarrassed by my plunging shirts and tops and had cringed on the school run at my pallid cleavage. Perhaps in hindsight I should have cringed as well.
‘Now that I’m Muslim,’ I said, ‘I will never have my breasts out in public again.’
‘We love Islam!’ they cheered and went off to play. And I love Islam too.
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Lauren
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CONVERTED TO ISLAM
In 2010, Lauren Booth made contact with an unseen force. She went to check out a well known sacred place, a treasure. It was a shrine of a holy lady. There she discovered a mighty force, beautiful, yet unseen. It touched her body. There was unusual communitation between the force and Lauren. What wise men call Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind. The message changed the British journalist forever. Saint Lauren. She will not reveal to public its full contents. Reason unknown.
CONVERTED TO ISLAM
In 2010, Lauren Booth made contact with an unseen force. She went to check out a well known sacred place, a treasure. It was a shrine of a holy lady. There she discovered a mighty force, beautiful, yet unseen. It touched her body. There was unusual communitation between the force and Lauren. What wise men call Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind. The message changed the British journalist forever. Saint Lauren. She will not reveal to public its full contents. Reason unknown.
Career Woman
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Tony Blair's wife now has a sister who is a muslim. This was shocking news for those who hate Islam. Media quickly tried to show how bad Islam is.
British newspaper Daily Mail printed on Wednesday 27 October 2010 reports that
Islam is gaining more and more women converts.
A former muslim woman EVE AHMED who left Islam, gives the readers her reasons as to why she thinks so many modern career women are converting to Islam. Eve Ahmed tries to mislead the public.
27/10/2010 - DAILY MAIL:
WHY ARE SO MANY MODERN BRITISH CAREER WOMEN CONVERTING TO ISLAM?
Tony Blair’s sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a ‘holy experience’ in Iran. She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so.
EVE AHMED who was raised as a Muslim before rejecting the faith, explores the reasons why.
Much of my childhood was spent trying to escape Islam.
Born in London to an English mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, I was brought up to follow my father’s faith without question.
But, privately, I hated it. The minute I left home for university at the age of 18, I abandoned it altogether.
As far as I was concerned, being a Muslim meant hearing the word ‘No’ over and over again.
Girls from my background were barred from so many of the things my English friends took for granted. Indeed, it seemed to me that almost anything fun was haram, or forbidden, to girls like me.
There were so many random, petty rules. No whistling. No chewing of gum. No riding bikes. No watching Top Of The Pops. No wearing make-up or clothes which revealed the shape of the body.
No eating in the street or putting my hands in my pockets. No cutting my hair or painting my nails. No asking questions or answering back. No keeping dogs as pets, (they were unclean).
And, of course, no sitting next to men, shaking their hands or even making eye contact with them.
These ground rules were imposed by my father and I, therefore, assumed they must be an integral part of being a good Muslim.
Small wonder, then, that as soon as I was old enough to exert my independence, I rejected the whole package and turned my back on Islam. After all, what modern, liberated British woman would choose to live such a life?
Well, quite a lot, it turns out, including Islam’s latest surprise convert, Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth. And after my own break with my past, I’ve followed with fascination the growing trend of Western women choosing to convert to Islam.
Broadcaster and journalist Booth, 43, says she now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque ‘when I can’.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom, and says: ‘It was a Tuesday evening, and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy.’
Before her awakening in Iran, she had been ‘sympathetic’ to Islam and has spent considerable time working in Palestine. ‘I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it gave,’ she says.
How, I wondered, could women be drawn to a religion which I felt had kept me in such a lowly, submissive place? How could their experiences of Islam be so very different to mine?
According to Kevin Brice from Swansea University, who has specialised in studying white conversion to Islam, these women are part of an intriguing trend.
He explains: ‘They seek spirituality, a higher meaning, and tend to be deep thinkers. The other type of women who turn to Islam are what I call “converts of convenience”. They’ll assume the trappings of the religion to please their Muslim husband and his family, but won’t necessarily attend mosque, pray or fast.’
I spoke to a diverse selection of white Western converts in a bid to re-examine the faith I had rejected.
Women like Kristiane Backer, 43, a London-based former MTV presenter who had led the kind of liberal Western-style life that I yearned for as a teenager, yet who turned her back on it and embraced Islam instead. Her reason? The ‘anything goes’ permissive society that I coveted had proved to be a superficial void.
The turning point for Kristiane came when she met and briefly dated the former Pakistani cricketer and Muslim Imran Khan in 1992 during the height of her career. He took her to Pakistan where she says she was immediately touched by spirituality and the warmth of the people.
Kristiane says: ‘Though our relationship didn’t last, I began to study the Muslim faith and eventually converted. Because of the nature of my job, I’d been out interviewing rock stars, travelling all over the world and following every trend, yet I’d felt empty inside. Now, at last, I had contentment because Islam had given me a purpose in life.’
‘In the West, we are stressed for superficial reasons, like what clothes to wear. In Islam, everyone looks to a higher goal. Everything is done to please God. It was a completely different value system.
'Despite my lifestyle, I felt empty inside and realised how liberating it was to be a Muslim. To follow only one god makes life purer. You are not chasing every fad.
‘I grew up in Germany in a not very religious Protestant family. I drank and I partied, but I realised that we need to behave well now so we have a good after-life. We are responsible for our own actions.’
For a significant amount of women, their first contact with Islam comes from dating a Muslim boyfriend. Lynne Ali, 31, from Dagenham in Essex, freely admits to having been ‘a typical white hard-partying teenager’.
She says: ‘I would go out and get drunk with friends, wear tight and revealing clothing and date boys.
‘I also worked part-time as a DJ, so I was really into the club scene. I used to pray a bit as a Christian, but I used God as a sort of doctor, to fix things in my life. If anyone asked, I would’ve said that, generally, I was happy living life in the fast lane.’
But when she met her boyfriend, Zahid, at university, something dramatic happened.
She says: ‘His sister started talking to me about Islam, and it was as if everything in my life fitted into place. I think, underneath it all, I must have been searching for something, and I wasn’t feeling fulfilled by my hard-drinking party lifestyle.’
Lynne converted aged 19. ‘From that day, I started wearing the hijab,’ she explains, ‘and I now never show my hair in public. At home, I’ll dress in normal Western clothes in front of my husband, but never out of the house.’
With a recent YouGov survey concluding that more than half the British public believe Islam to be a negative influence that encourages extremism, the repression of women and inequality, one might ask why any of them would choose such a direction for themselves.
Yet statistics suggest Islamic conversion is not a mere flash in the pan but a significant development. Islam is, after all, the world’s fastest growing religion, and white adopters are an important part of that story.
‘Evidence suggests that the ratio of Western women converts to male could be as high as 2:1,’ says Kevin Brice.
Moreover, he says, often these female converts are eager to display the visible signs of their faith — in particular the hijab — whereas many Muslim girls brought up in the faith choose not to.
‘Perhaps as a result of these actions, which tend to draw attention, white Muslims often report greater amounts of discrimination against them than do born Muslims,’ adds Brice, which is what happened to Kristiane Backer.
She says: ‘In Germany, there is Islamophobia. I lost my job when I converted. There was a Press campaign against me with insinuations about all Muslims supporting terrorists — I was vilified. Now, I am a presenter on NBC Europe.
‘I call myself a European Muslim, which is different to the ‘born’ Muslim. I was married to one, a Moroccan, but it didn’t work because he placed restrictions on me because of how he’d been brought up. As a European Muslim, I question everything — I don’t accept blindly.
‘But what I love is the hospitality and the warmth of the Muslim community. London is the best place in Europe for Muslims, there is wonderful Islamic culture here and I am very happy.’
For some converts, Islam represents a celebration of old-fashioned family values.
Some are drawn to the sense of belonging and of community — values which have eroded in the West,’ says Haifaa Jawad, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, who has studied the white conversion phenomenon.
‘Many people, from all walks of life, mourn the loss in today’s society of traditional respect for the elderly and for women, for example. These are values which are enshrined in the Koran, which Muslims have to live by,’ adds Brice.
It is values like these which drew Camilla Leyland, 32, a yoga teacher who lives in Cornwall, to Islam. A single mother to daughter, Inaya, two, she converted in her mid-20s for ‘intellectual and feminist reasons’.
She explains: ‘I know people will be surprised to hear the words “feminism” and “Islam” in the same breath, but in fact, the teachings of the Koran give equality to women, and at the time the religion was born, the teachings went against the grain of a misogynistic society.
The big mistake people make is by confusing culture with religion. Yes, there are Muslim cultures which do not allow women individual freedom, yet when I was growing up, I felt more oppressed by Western society.’
She talks of the pressure on women to act like men by drinking and having casual sex. ‘There was no real meaning to it all. In Islam, if you begin a relationship, that is a commitment of intent.’
Growing up in Southampton — her father was the director of Southampton Institute of Education and her mother a home economics teacher — Camilla’s interest in Islam began at school.
She went to university and later took a Masters degree in Middle East Studies. But it was while living and working in Syria that she had a spiritual epiphany. Reflecting on what she’d read in the Koran, she realised she wanted to convert.
Her decision was met with bemusement by friends and family.
‘People found it so hard to believe that an educated, middle-class white woman would choose to become Muslim,’ she says.
While Camilla’s faith remains strong, she no longer wears the hijab in public. But several of the women I spoke to said strict Islamic dress was something they found empowering and liberating.
Lynne Ali remembers the night this hit home for her. ‘I went to an old friend’s 21st birthday party in a bar,’ she reveals. ‘I walked in, wearing my hijab and modest clothing, and saw how everyone else had so much flesh on display. They were drunk, slurring their words and dancing provocatively.
‘For the first time, I could see my former life with an outsider’s eyes, and I knew I could never go back to that.
‘I am so grateful I found my escape route. This is the real me — I am happy to pray five times a day and take classes at the mosque. I am no longer a slave to a broken society and its expectations.’
Kristiane Backer, who has written a book on her own spiritual journey, called From MTV To Mecca, believes the new breed of modern, independent Muslims can band together to show the world that Islam is not the faith I grew up in — one that stamps on the rights of women.
She says: ‘I know women born Muslims who became disillusioned an d rebelled against it. When you dig deeper, it’s not the faith they turned against, but the culture.
'Rules like marrying within the same sect or caste and education being less important for girls, as they should get married anyway —– where does it say that in the Koran? It doesn’t.
‘Many young Muslims have abandoned the “fire and brimstone” version they were born into have re-discovered a more spiritual and intellectual approach, that’s free from the cultural dogmas of the older generation. That’s how I intend to spend my life, showing the world the beauty of the true Islam.’
While I don’t agree with their sentiments, I admire and respect the women I interviewed for this piece.
They were all bright and educated, and have thought long and hard before choosing to convert to Islam — and now feel passionately about their adopted religion. Good luck to them. And good luck to Lauren Booth. But it’s that word that sums up the difference between their experience and mine — choice.
Perhaps if I’d felt in control rather than controlled, if I’d felt empowered rather than stifled, I would still be practising the religion I was born into, and would not carry the burden of guilt that I do about rejecting my father’s faith.
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24/10/2010 - DAILY MAIL:
TONY BLAIR'S SISTER-IN-LAW-CONVERTS TO ISLAM AFTER A "HOLY EXPERIENCE" IN IRAN
Broadcaster and journalist Lauren Booth, 43 - said she now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque ‘when I can’.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.
‘It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy,’ she told The Mail on Sunday.
When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.
‘Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,' she said.
'The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven’t wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.’
Refusing to discount the possibility that she might wear a burka, she said: ‘Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?’
Before her awakening in Iran, she had been ‘sympathetic’ to Islam and has spent considerable time working in Palestine. ‘I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it gave,’ she said of the religion.
Miss Booth, who works for Press TV, the English-language Iranian news channel, has been a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.
In August 2008 she travelled to Gaza by ship from Cyprus, along with 46 other activists, to highlight Israel’s blockade of the territory.
She was subsequently refused entry into both Israel and Egypt.
In 2006 she was a contestant on the ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity. Get Me Out Of Here!, donating her fee to the Palestinian relief charity Interpal.
She said she hoped her conversion would help Mr Blair change his presumptions about Islam.
During her visit to Iran last month, Booth wrote a public letter to Mr Blair asking him to mark Al-Quds (Jerusalem) day - a protest at Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The missive was a bitter attack on the former Prime Minister, who is now a Middle East envoy working for peace in the troubled region.
'The men, women and children around me withstood a day of no water and no food (it’s called Ramadan, Tony, it’s a fast),' Booth wrote.
'Coping with hunger and thirst in the hundred degrees heat, as if it were nothing. They can withstand deprivation in the Muslim world.
'Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It's kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.'
She adds: 'Your world view is that Muslims, are mad, bad, dangerous to know. A contagion to be contained.
'In the final chapter [of his autobiography] you say we need a "religious counter attack" against Islam. And by "Islam" you mean the Al Quds rallies, the Palestinian intifada (based on an anti Apartheid struggle Tony, NOT religious bigotry), against every Arab who fails to put their arms in the air as the F16 missiles rain on their homes and refugee camps and sing a rousing chorus of ‘Imagine all the people...’
Booth moved to France with her family - husband Craig Darby and two daughters Alexandra and Holly in 2004.
Her husband was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in April 2009 when he was drunk and not wearing a helmet.
He suffered a severe brain injury, a fractured neck, damage to his spine and several broken ribs and was in a deep coma for two weeks.
The 42-year-old had to learn how to walk and talk again. He lost much of his memory, has sight problem and cannot work.
The couple decided to move back to Britain to help his recovery and reduce the amount of time Booth has to work away from home.
Booth took part in I'm A Celebrity... Get Met Out of Here! in 2006 alongside Myleene Klass and Jason Donovan, finishing ninth.
Of her relationship with the Blairs, she said at the time: 'I'm happy to criticise them politically if they deserve it but that on a personal level we get on fine.'
--
Tony Blair's wife now has a sister who is a muslim. This was shocking news for those who hate Islam. Media quickly tried to show how bad Islam is.
British newspaper Daily Mail printed on Wednesday 27 October 2010 reports that
Islam is gaining more and more women converts.
A former muslim woman EVE AHMED who left Islam, gives the readers her reasons as to why she thinks so many modern career women are converting to Islam. Eve Ahmed tries to mislead the public.
27/10/2010 - DAILY MAIL:
WHY ARE SO MANY MODERN BRITISH CAREER WOMEN CONVERTING TO ISLAM?
Tony Blair’s sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a ‘holy experience’ in Iran. She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so.
EVE AHMED who was raised as a Muslim before rejecting the faith, explores the reasons why.
Much of my childhood was spent trying to escape Islam.
Born in London to an English mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, I was brought up to follow my father’s faith without question.
But, privately, I hated it. The minute I left home for university at the age of 18, I abandoned it altogether.
As far as I was concerned, being a Muslim meant hearing the word ‘No’ over and over again.
Girls from my background were barred from so many of the things my English friends took for granted. Indeed, it seemed to me that almost anything fun was haram, or forbidden, to girls like me.
There were so many random, petty rules. No whistling. No chewing of gum. No riding bikes. No watching Top Of The Pops. No wearing make-up or clothes which revealed the shape of the body.
No eating in the street or putting my hands in my pockets. No cutting my hair or painting my nails. No asking questions or answering back. No keeping dogs as pets, (they were unclean).
And, of course, no sitting next to men, shaking their hands or even making eye contact with them.
These ground rules were imposed by my father and I, therefore, assumed they must be an integral part of being a good Muslim.
Small wonder, then, that as soon as I was old enough to exert my independence, I rejected the whole package and turned my back on Islam. After all, what modern, liberated British woman would choose to live such a life?
Well, quite a lot, it turns out, including Islam’s latest surprise convert, Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth. And after my own break with my past, I’ve followed with fascination the growing trend of Western women choosing to convert to Islam.
Broadcaster and journalist Booth, 43, says she now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque ‘when I can’.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom, and says: ‘It was a Tuesday evening, and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy.’
Before her awakening in Iran, she had been ‘sympathetic’ to Islam and has spent considerable time working in Palestine. ‘I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it gave,’ she says.
How, I wondered, could women be drawn to a religion which I felt had kept me in such a lowly, submissive place? How could their experiences of Islam be so very different to mine?
According to Kevin Brice from Swansea University, who has specialised in studying white conversion to Islam, these women are part of an intriguing trend.
He explains: ‘They seek spirituality, a higher meaning, and tend to be deep thinkers. The other type of women who turn to Islam are what I call “converts of convenience”. They’ll assume the trappings of the religion to please their Muslim husband and his family, but won’t necessarily attend mosque, pray or fast.’
I spoke to a diverse selection of white Western converts in a bid to re-examine the faith I had rejected.
Women like Kristiane Backer, 43, a London-based former MTV presenter who had led the kind of liberal Western-style life that I yearned for as a teenager, yet who turned her back on it and embraced Islam instead. Her reason? The ‘anything goes’ permissive society that I coveted had proved to be a superficial void.
The turning point for Kristiane came when she met and briefly dated the former Pakistani cricketer and Muslim Imran Khan in 1992 during the height of her career. He took her to Pakistan where she says she was immediately touched by spirituality and the warmth of the people.
Kristiane says: ‘Though our relationship didn’t last, I began to study the Muslim faith and eventually converted. Because of the nature of my job, I’d been out interviewing rock stars, travelling all over the world and following every trend, yet I’d felt empty inside. Now, at last, I had contentment because Islam had given me a purpose in life.’
‘In the West, we are stressed for superficial reasons, like what clothes to wear. In Islam, everyone looks to a higher goal. Everything is done to please God. It was a completely different value system.
'Despite my lifestyle, I felt empty inside and realised how liberating it was to be a Muslim. To follow only one god makes life purer. You are not chasing every fad.
‘I grew up in Germany in a not very religious Protestant family. I drank and I partied, but I realised that we need to behave well now so we have a good after-life. We are responsible for our own actions.’
For a significant amount of women, their first contact with Islam comes from dating a Muslim boyfriend. Lynne Ali, 31, from Dagenham in Essex, freely admits to having been ‘a typical white hard-partying teenager’.
She says: ‘I would go out and get drunk with friends, wear tight and revealing clothing and date boys.
‘I also worked part-time as a DJ, so I was really into the club scene. I used to pray a bit as a Christian, but I used God as a sort of doctor, to fix things in my life. If anyone asked, I would’ve said that, generally, I was happy living life in the fast lane.’
But when she met her boyfriend, Zahid, at university, something dramatic happened.
She says: ‘His sister started talking to me about Islam, and it was as if everything in my life fitted into place. I think, underneath it all, I must have been searching for something, and I wasn’t feeling fulfilled by my hard-drinking party lifestyle.’
Lynne converted aged 19. ‘From that day, I started wearing the hijab,’ she explains, ‘and I now never show my hair in public. At home, I’ll dress in normal Western clothes in front of my husband, but never out of the house.’
With a recent YouGov survey concluding that more than half the British public believe Islam to be a negative influence that encourages extremism, the repression of women and inequality, one might ask why any of them would choose such a direction for themselves.
Yet statistics suggest Islamic conversion is not a mere flash in the pan but a significant development. Islam is, after all, the world’s fastest growing religion, and white adopters are an important part of that story.
‘Evidence suggests that the ratio of Western women converts to male could be as high as 2:1,’ says Kevin Brice.
Moreover, he says, often these female converts are eager to display the visible signs of their faith — in particular the hijab — whereas many Muslim girls brought up in the faith choose not to.
‘Perhaps as a result of these actions, which tend to draw attention, white Muslims often report greater amounts of discrimination against them than do born Muslims,’ adds Brice, which is what happened to Kristiane Backer.
She says: ‘In Germany, there is Islamophobia. I lost my job when I converted. There was a Press campaign against me with insinuations about all Muslims supporting terrorists — I was vilified. Now, I am a presenter on NBC Europe.
‘I call myself a European Muslim, which is different to the ‘born’ Muslim. I was married to one, a Moroccan, but it didn’t work because he placed restrictions on me because of how he’d been brought up. As a European Muslim, I question everything — I don’t accept blindly.
‘But what I love is the hospitality and the warmth of the Muslim community. London is the best place in Europe for Muslims, there is wonderful Islamic culture here and I am very happy.’
For some converts, Islam represents a celebration of old-fashioned family values.
Some are drawn to the sense of belonging and of community — values which have eroded in the West,’ says Haifaa Jawad, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, who has studied the white conversion phenomenon.
‘Many people, from all walks of life, mourn the loss in today’s society of traditional respect for the elderly and for women, for example. These are values which are enshrined in the Koran, which Muslims have to live by,’ adds Brice.
It is values like these which drew Camilla Leyland, 32, a yoga teacher who lives in Cornwall, to Islam. A single mother to daughter, Inaya, two, she converted in her mid-20s for ‘intellectual and feminist reasons’.
She explains: ‘I know people will be surprised to hear the words “feminism” and “Islam” in the same breath, but in fact, the teachings of the Koran give equality to women, and at the time the religion was born, the teachings went against the grain of a misogynistic society.
The big mistake people make is by confusing culture with religion. Yes, there are Muslim cultures which do not allow women individual freedom, yet when I was growing up, I felt more oppressed by Western society.’
She talks of the pressure on women to act like men by drinking and having casual sex. ‘There was no real meaning to it all. In Islam, if you begin a relationship, that is a commitment of intent.’
Growing up in Southampton — her father was the director of Southampton Institute of Education and her mother a home economics teacher — Camilla’s interest in Islam began at school.
She went to university and later took a Masters degree in Middle East Studies. But it was while living and working in Syria that she had a spiritual epiphany. Reflecting on what she’d read in the Koran, she realised she wanted to convert.
Her decision was met with bemusement by friends and family.
‘People found it so hard to believe that an educated, middle-class white woman would choose to become Muslim,’ she says.
While Camilla’s faith remains strong, she no longer wears the hijab in public. But several of the women I spoke to said strict Islamic dress was something they found empowering and liberating.
Lynne Ali remembers the night this hit home for her. ‘I went to an old friend’s 21st birthday party in a bar,’ she reveals. ‘I walked in, wearing my hijab and modest clothing, and saw how everyone else had so much flesh on display. They were drunk, slurring their words and dancing provocatively.
‘For the first time, I could see my former life with an outsider’s eyes, and I knew I could never go back to that.
‘I am so grateful I found my escape route. This is the real me — I am happy to pray five times a day and take classes at the mosque. I am no longer a slave to a broken society and its expectations.’
Kristiane Backer, who has written a book on her own spiritual journey, called From MTV To Mecca, believes the new breed of modern, independent Muslims can band together to show the world that Islam is not the faith I grew up in — one that stamps on the rights of women.
She says: ‘I know women born Muslims who became disillusioned an d rebelled against it. When you dig deeper, it’s not the faith they turned against, but the culture.
'Rules like marrying within the same sect or caste and education being less important for girls, as they should get married anyway —– where does it say that in the Koran? It doesn’t.
‘Many young Muslims have abandoned the “fire and brimstone” version they were born into have re-discovered a more spiritual and intellectual approach, that’s free from the cultural dogmas of the older generation. That’s how I intend to spend my life, showing the world the beauty of the true Islam.’
While I don’t agree with their sentiments, I admire and respect the women I interviewed for this piece.
They were all bright and educated, and have thought long and hard before choosing to convert to Islam — and now feel passionately about their adopted religion. Good luck to them. And good luck to Lauren Booth. But it’s that word that sums up the difference between their experience and mine — choice.
Perhaps if I’d felt in control rather than controlled, if I’d felt empowered rather than stifled, I would still be practising the religion I was born into, and would not carry the burden of guilt that I do about rejecting my father’s faith.
--
24/10/2010 - DAILY MAIL:
TONY BLAIR'S SISTER-IN-LAW-CONVERTS TO ISLAM AFTER A "HOLY EXPERIENCE" IN IRAN
Broadcaster and journalist Lauren Booth, 43 - said she now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque ‘when I can’.
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.
‘It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy,’ she told The Mail on Sunday.
When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.
‘Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,' she said.
'The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven’t wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.’
Refusing to discount the possibility that she might wear a burka, she said: ‘Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?’
Before her awakening in Iran, she had been ‘sympathetic’ to Islam and has spent considerable time working in Palestine. ‘I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it gave,’ she said of the religion.
Miss Booth, who works for Press TV, the English-language Iranian news channel, has been a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.
In August 2008 she travelled to Gaza by ship from Cyprus, along with 46 other activists, to highlight Israel’s blockade of the territory.
She was subsequently refused entry into both Israel and Egypt.
In 2006 she was a contestant on the ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity. Get Me Out Of Here!, donating her fee to the Palestinian relief charity Interpal.
She said she hoped her conversion would help Mr Blair change his presumptions about Islam.
During her visit to Iran last month, Booth wrote a public letter to Mr Blair asking him to mark Al-Quds (Jerusalem) day - a protest at Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The missive was a bitter attack on the former Prime Minister, who is now a Middle East envoy working for peace in the troubled region.
'The men, women and children around me withstood a day of no water and no food (it’s called Ramadan, Tony, it’s a fast),' Booth wrote.
'Coping with hunger and thirst in the hundred degrees heat, as if it were nothing. They can withstand deprivation in the Muslim world.
'Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It's kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.'
She adds: 'Your world view is that Muslims, are mad, bad, dangerous to know. A contagion to be contained.
'In the final chapter [of his autobiography] you say we need a "religious counter attack" against Islam. And by "Islam" you mean the Al Quds rallies, the Palestinian intifada (based on an anti Apartheid struggle Tony, NOT religious bigotry), against every Arab who fails to put their arms in the air as the F16 missiles rain on their homes and refugee camps and sing a rousing chorus of ‘Imagine all the people...’
Booth moved to France with her family - husband Craig Darby and two daughters Alexandra and Holly in 2004.
Her husband was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in April 2009 when he was drunk and not wearing a helmet.
He suffered a severe brain injury, a fractured neck, damage to his spine and several broken ribs and was in a deep coma for two weeks.
The 42-year-old had to learn how to walk and talk again. He lost much of his memory, has sight problem and cannot work.
The couple decided to move back to Britain to help his recovery and reduce the amount of time Booth has to work away from home.
Booth took part in I'm A Celebrity... Get Met Out of Here! in 2006 alongside Myleene Klass and Jason Donovan, finishing ninth.
Of her relationship with the Blairs, she said at the time: 'I'm happy to criticise them politically if they deserve it but that on a personal level we get on fine.'
--
Francois-Cerrah
--
FOXNEWS
September 24, 2010
Actress Among Growing Number of Women Converting to Islam in Britain
By Amy Kellogg
Myriam Francois-Cerrah found fame as a child actress in the 90's hit film Sense and Sensibility. Now she's known for being one of a growing number of educated middle class female converts to Islam in Britain.
Francois-Cerrah says the September 11 terror attacks led to an intellectual curiosity about Islam and ultimately to conversion to the religion. She believes the Prophet Muhammad was a man of peace.
She says, “There were several things that were pivotal in leading to this change in me. One was looking into the Prophet Muhammad. I think he is one of the great misunderstood figures of history.”
Francois-Cerrah goes on. “One of his favorite quotes was, ‘Forgive him who wrongs you. Join him who cuts you off. Do good to him who does evil to you and speak the truth even if it be against yourself.’”
Francois-Cerrah says the radical fringe behind terror attacks doesn't represent the masses.
"Muslims as a rule, the mainstream, don't look at these actions and think oh those Muslims over there are doing that. They think who are these crazy loons!"
Kristianne Backer was an MTV host in Germany when she converted to Islam. She moved to the UK when her conversion got a lot of negative press.
Backer says she has no regrets.
"I met a lot of famous, interesting people in life, but ultimately it was an empty life, so now I am from ‘Empty-V’, from entertainment to ‘inner-tainment.’ I had a crisis after a few years jetting around like a circus horse, on stage, home alone, empty and I didn't know why I was doing it and Islam was somehow introduced to me."
I asked editor of Emel magazine, Sarah Joseph, herself a convert, what is drawing women to the religion.
“People go to, travel to, Muslim countries, and see great beauty and hospitality and that draws them to it—the art and the architecture.”
Joseph explains that any negative press about Islam has not only served to repel some people, but it has drawn others.
The head of Islamic studies at London's School of Theology says many of the converts are looking for greater structure or discipline in their lives. But he also said that while there has been a small but steady increase in the number of women converting to Islam here, there are more Muslims dropping their religion than there are people converting to it.
Diana Nammi works to improve the rights of Muslim women. She runs the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation.
“It’s a big question why women are converting to Islam considering that Islam and its sharia law is not based on equality between men and women.”
Nammi says while some like Francois-Cerrah and Backer find justice and equality in the faith, honor killings and household repression are the other extreme-manifestations of Islamic culture in some families she deals with.
“They prevent them from going out, prevent them from having boyfriends, prevent them from enjoying life. Just because of their religion issue and the strictness that has been set for women."
Some say the middle class converts living in the UK have the luxury of being able to cherry pick the aspects of Islam that suit and uplift them.
--
--
British actor enchanted by Prophet's life
27/09/2010
A British actress says she was motivated to convert to islam especially when she started looking into the life of Prophet Mohammad.
Myriam Francois-Cerrah says, “There were several things that were pivotal in leading to this change in me. One was looking into the Prophet Muhammad. I think he is one of the great misunderstood figures of history.”
"My intellectual curiosity was sparked as a result of the backlash against my Muslims friends after 9/11 when I, like most people, was convinced that Islam was responsible for this atrocity. I wanted to understand why my friends would remain part of such a faith.“
“When I began looking into the faith, I realised how antithetical those terrorist actions are to the core message of Islam which enjoins peace, moderation and fairness. I then began to realise what was actually behind 9/11 was the distorted ideology of some political extremists, using Islam as a veneer to justify their actions."
“Islam is about always having balance and I think the prophet's message was fundamentally about having balance and equilibrium in all that we do.”
“The prophet's message was always that you repel bad with good that you always respond to evil with good and always remember that god loves justice so even when people are committing serious injustices against you, you have a moral responsibility and a moral obligation in front of god to always appall justice and never yourself transgress those limits.”
She quotes a few favourite quotes by Prophet Mohammad such as 'Forgive him who wrongs you. Join him who cuts you off. Do good to him who does evil to you and speak the truth even if it be against yourself.'”
“Islam's beauty really becomes to its own when it becomes manifest and it becomes manifest when you make it into a tool for the betterment of society, human kind and the world.”
“The ideal from an Islamic perspective is for ethics to become lived ethics to become an applied body of values and not remain unfortunately as it often is cloistered in the mosque of somewhere which is some more divorced from reality.”
--
FOXNEWS
September 24, 2010
Actress Among Growing Number of Women Converting to Islam in Britain
By Amy Kellogg
Myriam Francois-Cerrah found fame as a child actress in the 90's hit film Sense and Sensibility. Now she's known for being one of a growing number of educated middle class female converts to Islam in Britain.
Francois-Cerrah says the September 11 terror attacks led to an intellectual curiosity about Islam and ultimately to conversion to the religion. She believes the Prophet Muhammad was a man of peace.
She says, “There were several things that were pivotal in leading to this change in me. One was looking into the Prophet Muhammad. I think he is one of the great misunderstood figures of history.”
Francois-Cerrah goes on. “One of his favorite quotes was, ‘Forgive him who wrongs you. Join him who cuts you off. Do good to him who does evil to you and speak the truth even if it be against yourself.’”
Francois-Cerrah says the radical fringe behind terror attacks doesn't represent the masses.
"Muslims as a rule, the mainstream, don't look at these actions and think oh those Muslims over there are doing that. They think who are these crazy loons!"
Kristianne Backer was an MTV host in Germany when she converted to Islam. She moved to the UK when her conversion got a lot of negative press.
Backer says she has no regrets.
"I met a lot of famous, interesting people in life, but ultimately it was an empty life, so now I am from ‘Empty-V’, from entertainment to ‘inner-tainment.’ I had a crisis after a few years jetting around like a circus horse, on stage, home alone, empty and I didn't know why I was doing it and Islam was somehow introduced to me."
I asked editor of Emel magazine, Sarah Joseph, herself a convert, what is drawing women to the religion.
“People go to, travel to, Muslim countries, and see great beauty and hospitality and that draws them to it—the art and the architecture.”
Joseph explains that any negative press about Islam has not only served to repel some people, but it has drawn others.
The head of Islamic studies at London's School of Theology says many of the converts are looking for greater structure or discipline in their lives. But he also said that while there has been a small but steady increase in the number of women converting to Islam here, there are more Muslims dropping their religion than there are people converting to it.
Diana Nammi works to improve the rights of Muslim women. She runs the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation.
“It’s a big question why women are converting to Islam considering that Islam and its sharia law is not based on equality between men and women.”
Nammi says while some like Francois-Cerrah and Backer find justice and equality in the faith, honor killings and household repression are the other extreme-manifestations of Islamic culture in some families she deals with.
“They prevent them from going out, prevent them from having boyfriends, prevent them from enjoying life. Just because of their religion issue and the strictness that has been set for women."
Some say the middle class converts living in the UK have the luxury of being able to cherry pick the aspects of Islam that suit and uplift them.
--
--
British actor enchanted by Prophet's life
27/09/2010
A British actress says she was motivated to convert to islam especially when she started looking into the life of Prophet Mohammad.
Myriam Francois-Cerrah says, “There were several things that were pivotal in leading to this change in me. One was looking into the Prophet Muhammad. I think he is one of the great misunderstood figures of history.”
"My intellectual curiosity was sparked as a result of the backlash against my Muslims friends after 9/11 when I, like most people, was convinced that Islam was responsible for this atrocity. I wanted to understand why my friends would remain part of such a faith.“
“When I began looking into the faith, I realised how antithetical those terrorist actions are to the core message of Islam which enjoins peace, moderation and fairness. I then began to realise what was actually behind 9/11 was the distorted ideology of some political extremists, using Islam as a veneer to justify their actions."
“Islam is about always having balance and I think the prophet's message was fundamentally about having balance and equilibrium in all that we do.”
“The prophet's message was always that you repel bad with good that you always respond to evil with good and always remember that god loves justice so even when people are committing serious injustices against you, you have a moral responsibility and a moral obligation in front of god to always appall justice and never yourself transgress those limits.”
She quotes a few favourite quotes by Prophet Mohammad such as 'Forgive him who wrongs you. Join him who cuts you off. Do good to him who does evil to you and speak the truth even if it be against yourself.'”
“Islam's beauty really becomes to its own when it becomes manifest and it becomes manifest when you make it into a tool for the betterment of society, human kind and the world.”
“The ideal from an Islamic perspective is for ethics to become lived ethics to become an applied body of values and not remain unfortunately as it often is cloistered in the mosque of somewhere which is some more divorced from reality.”
--
BBC on converts
--
BBC
Monday 14 June 2010.
Women converting to Islam
Presented by Jane Garvey.
Thousands of young British women living in the UK decide to convert to Islam - what's the appeal?
Evidence suggests more than half of UK converts to Islam are women. Jane looks at the reasons women find Islam appealing, and discusses the issues they face if they convert, with sociologist Kevin Brice and convert Batool Al-Toma.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snm84
--
BBC
Monday 14 June 2010.
Women converting to Islam
Presented by Jane Garvey.
Thousands of young British women living in the UK decide to convert to Islam - what's the appeal?
Evidence suggests more than half of UK converts to Islam are women. Jane looks at the reasons women find Islam appealing, and discusses the issues they face if they convert, with sociologist Kevin Brice and convert Batool Al-Toma.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snm84
--
Niqab fears
--
Some British females who convert to Islam do not wish to reveal their face. These women decide to wear a NIQAB for religious reasons. There are many different types of veils which cover the lips and nose.
British newspaper The Times invited a muslim born woman to explain necessaity of wearing niqabs.
Fatima Barkatulla:
THE NIQAB: FACT VERSES FACTION
How much do you really know about the niqab? An insider guide to common misconceptions
Fatima Barkatulla is a regular columnist on SISTERS, the magazine
for 'fabulous Muslim women' [ http://www.sisters-magazine.com/ ]
THE TIMES - 21 July 2001
1.The niqab is a symbol of female subjugation.
None of the niqab-wearing women who I know, wear it because they have been forced to. They see it as an act of devotion to their Creator: the culmination of a spiritual journey. In fact most of them are women who were born and brought up in the UK; many are White or Afro-Caribbean Muslim converts to Islam who have chosen to observe it. The hijab, niqab and abaya are outer garments and are worn only when outdoors or in the presence of men who are not close relatives and so, contrary to popular belief, underneath their robes, in family and female-only settings Muslim women are often very fashion conscious and outgoing. They dress in everyday clothing; they get their hair done, go on holiday and even buy lingerie!
2. Women who wear the niqab cannot possibly contribute to society
People are surprised to hear that niqab-wearers come from varied vocational backgrounds. They include doctors, teachers, dentists, authors, social workers, university graduates, lecturers and more. They usually prefer to work in a female environment and so would not wear the face-veil all the time. Other women say that wearing the niqab actually makes them feel more comfortable when they are working with men. It is ironic that the very women who are the subject of debate are far from being a burden on society: they don’t get drunk and disorderly, don’t smoke and are likely to be very good citizens. Many of them are full-time mothers who take pride in raising well-educated children who will be an asset to British society.
3. Niqab isn’t in the Quran
The Quranic worldview presents a complete system of living, which permeates the daily lives of observant Muslims. This includes everything from rituals of personal hygiene, advice on neighbourly behaviour and animal rights to regulations for dress. Some women see the niqab as a religious obligation, others, as an act of worship following in the footsteps of notable Muslim women of the past. Numerous verses in the Quran contain directives for Muslim women’s dress, amongst them:
“O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the Believers to draw their outer garments all over their bodies. That will be better, so that they may be known and so as not to be annoyed, and God is Ever-forgiving, Most Merciful.” (33:59)
The Quran was interpreted by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his disciples and their teachings form the basis of Islamic law. There are two orthodox schools of thought with regards to the interpretation of this verse. One orthodox interpretation is that it means covering the whole body including the face. The other school of thought is that, though not obligatory, covering the face is a virtue.
4. Wearing the niqab implies that all men are predatory
Just as locking our doors at night doesn’t imply that all members of society are burglars, wearing the niqab doesn’t imply that all men are predatory.
The Islamic worldview recognises that attraction between men and women exists and, if left unharnessed, has the potential to break down the moral fabric of society. It also acknowledges the physiological and physical differences between men and women and therefore Islamic legislation for dress and behaviour reflect these differences and aid adherents to avoid situations that could lead to extra-marital sexual relations. Hence both men and women have been commanded to lower their gazes and given directives on dress.
5. The niqab poses a security risk at banks and airports
By simply going to the side and showing their faces and ID to female members of staff, Muslim women who wear the niqab, have been, for decades, passing through airport security in major airports all over the world without cause for security concern. The same sort of arrangement can be made for any situation where ID needs to be checked.
6.Niqab wearers can’t possibly be teachers.
There are many highly qualified and experienced Muslim teachers. A Muslim teacher, who wears the niqab, would not need to do so if men were not present, therefore many female Muslim teachers choose to teach women or children and uncover their faces whilst teaching.
7. Banning the niqab will free those Muslim women who are coerced into wearing it.
Banning the face-veil would be totally counter-productive: it would cause many Muslim women to feel targeted and persecuted and is likely to cause many talented women to withdraw from society. The majority of niqab-wearing women in Europe, wear it out of personal choice, so if, for the sake of a suspected minority, the niqab was to be banned, this would be clear discrimination against the majority. If we want to empower women from any community who are oppressed or abused, effective public services where such abuse can be reported need to be made more available and accessible to the women involved.
-
Some British females who convert to Islam do not wish to reveal their face. These women decide to wear a NIQAB for religious reasons. There are many different types of veils which cover the lips and nose.
British newspaper The Times invited a muslim born woman to explain necessaity of wearing niqabs.
Fatima Barkatulla:
THE NIQAB: FACT VERSES FACTION
How much do you really know about the niqab? An insider guide to common misconceptions
Fatima Barkatulla is a regular columnist on SISTERS, the magazine
for 'fabulous Muslim women' [ http://www.sisters-magazine.com/ ]
THE TIMES - 21 July 2001
1.The niqab is a symbol of female subjugation.
None of the niqab-wearing women who I know, wear it because they have been forced to. They see it as an act of devotion to their Creator: the culmination of a spiritual journey. In fact most of them are women who were born and brought up in the UK; many are White or Afro-Caribbean Muslim converts to Islam who have chosen to observe it. The hijab, niqab and abaya are outer garments and are worn only when outdoors or in the presence of men who are not close relatives and so, contrary to popular belief, underneath their robes, in family and female-only settings Muslim women are often very fashion conscious and outgoing. They dress in everyday clothing; they get their hair done, go on holiday and even buy lingerie!
2. Women who wear the niqab cannot possibly contribute to societyPeople are surprised to hear that niqab-wearers come from varied vocational backgrounds. They include doctors, teachers, dentists, authors, social workers, university graduates, lecturers and more. They usually prefer to work in a female environment and so would not wear the face-veil all the time. Other women say that wearing the niqab actually makes them feel more comfortable when they are working with men. It is ironic that the very women who are the subject of debate are far from being a burden on society: they don’t get drunk and disorderly, don’t smoke and are likely to be very good citizens. Many of them are full-time mothers who take pride in raising well-educated children who will be an asset to British society.
3. Niqab isn’t in the QuranThe Quranic worldview presents a complete system of living, which permeates the daily lives of observant Muslims. This includes everything from rituals of personal hygiene, advice on neighbourly behaviour and animal rights to regulations for dress. Some women see the niqab as a religious obligation, others, as an act of worship following in the footsteps of notable Muslim women of the past. Numerous verses in the Quran contain directives for Muslim women’s dress, amongst them:
“O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the Believers to draw their outer garments all over their bodies. That will be better, so that they may be known and so as not to be annoyed, and God is Ever-forgiving, Most Merciful.” (33:59)
The Quran was interpreted by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his disciples and their teachings form the basis of Islamic law. There are two orthodox schools of thought with regards to the interpretation of this verse. One orthodox interpretation is that it means covering the whole body including the face. The other school of thought is that, though not obligatory, covering the face is a virtue.
4. Wearing the niqab implies that all men are predatoryJust as locking our doors at night doesn’t imply that all members of society are burglars, wearing the niqab doesn’t imply that all men are predatory.
The Islamic worldview recognises that attraction between men and women exists and, if left unharnessed, has the potential to break down the moral fabric of society. It also acknowledges the physiological and physical differences between men and women and therefore Islamic legislation for dress and behaviour reflect these differences and aid adherents to avoid situations that could lead to extra-marital sexual relations. Hence both men and women have been commanded to lower their gazes and given directives on dress.
5. The niqab poses a security risk at banks and airports
By simply going to the side and showing their faces and ID to female members of staff, Muslim women who wear the niqab, have been, for decades, passing through airport security in major airports all over the world without cause for security concern. The same sort of arrangement can be made for any situation where ID needs to be checked.
6.Niqab wearers can’t possibly be teachers.
There are many highly qualified and experienced Muslim teachers. A Muslim teacher, who wears the niqab, would not need to do so if men were not present, therefore many female Muslim teachers choose to teach women or children and uncover their faces whilst teaching.
7. Banning the niqab will free those Muslim women who are coerced into wearing it.Banning the face-veil would be totally counter-productive: it would cause many Muslim women to feel targeted and persecuted and is likely to cause many talented women to withdraw from society. The majority of niqab-wearing women in Europe, wear it out of personal choice, so if, for the sake of a suspected minority, the niqab was to be banned, this would be clear discrimination against the majority. If we want to empower women from any community who are oppressed or abused, effective public services where such abuse can be reported need to be made more available and accessible to the women involved.
-
Yvonne Ridley
--
YVONNE RIDLEY
Yvonne's time in the hands of the Taliban changed her life forever
British journalist Yvonne Ridley was captured by the Talibans two years ago. Find out why Ridley has converted to Islam following her ordeal.
Yvonne Ridley is the Sunday Express journalist who hit the headlines when she was arrested after being sent to cover the build-up to the Afghan war.
Two years ago Yvonne was detained on suspicion of spying after going in search of a scoop disguised in a traditional burka
But it ended in disaster when she was thrown into prison and held for ten days, while the government, Yvonne's family and work colleagues tried to secure her release.
Against the odds Yvonne was set free, but her time in the hands of the Taliban proved to be a life-changing experience.
Against The Odds
Yvonne Ridley says she was 'simply doing her job' when she was seized by the Taliban near the city of Jalalabad.
As Yvonne explains, "A camera which I had hidden in the folds of my burka slipped out right into the full view of a passing Taliban soldier."
"He went crazy - cameras were banned under the regime - and pulled me off the donkey and removed the camera."
For the first six days Yvonne was held in the intelligence headquarters in Jalalabad before being taken to Kabul prison.
Her cell was very basic and the experience was terrifying. Yvonne lay on her bed inside a dirty, claustrophobic prison cell with no running water.
"Every morning I woke up, I thought 'is this going to be my last day?'" she says.
Hostage to Fortune
Although Yvonne was never physically hurt in any way, the experience was mentally exhausting.
"Although they were very nice, I just thought 'these are the good guys, the bad cops are going to appear at any time now with electrodes and torture instruments, or I'm going to be taken outside and shot."
While being held captive she kept a secret diary using the inside of a box from a toothpaste tube and the inside of a soap wrapper.
Yvonne recorded her thoughts when she was in her cell.
"They tried to break me mentally by asking the same questions time and time again, day after day, sometimes until 9 o'clock at night," she recalls.
Muslim Convert
Whilst in prison Yvonne tried to secure her release by offering to read the Koran or Qur'an. It was the start of her conversion to Islam.
Yvonne took on the Muslim faith in August 2003. As a result she's given up drinking, tries to pray five times a day and visits a mosque every Friday.
So why has a feisty war correspondent been drawn to a faith which some in the west say oppresses women?
"I started reading the Koran and it was an absolutely breathtaking. It could have been written yesterday for today."
"It was crystal clear that women are equal in spirituality, worth and education," says Yvonne.
Yvonne was brought up as a Protestant in Stanley, sang in the church choir, and was the Sunday school teacher in her village.
Today she's exchanged her Church of England upbringing for Islam and a very different set of spiritual beliefs.
Changing Places
It's not just her faith that Yvonne has changed - she also has a new employer, the controversial Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Yvonne works on their new English website, and she's hooked on the internet. "It's a really exciting 24/7 operation... if something breaks, we can put it straight onto the Internet," she says.
Yvonne believes Al Jazeera has given the Arab world a previously unheard independent voice.
Anti-War Campaigner
Yvonne's experiences in the Middle East have made her a vocal anti-war campaigner.
She started to think about the futility of war because, in her words, "These missiles can't differentiate between civilians and military targets, between a woman, a child and a soldier."
"If I can use any of my fifteen minutes of notoriety and celebrity for good, then I will," says Yvonne.
Yvonne has also changed as a person. "I think I've become more reflective and tolerant than I used to be," she concludes.
In just two years, Yvonne has been transformed from a war corespondent to a committed Muslim with a new lifestyle and a change of career.
It's been an amazing spiritual and physical journey for the North East-born journalist who finally has found her spiritual roots, thousands of miles from her country of birth.
From Durham to Dohar, it's been an amazing adventure and a fascinating spiritual rebirth.
ISLAM FACT FILE
There are two billion Muslims world-wide.
The Qur'an is the Book of Allah that was revealed to the Prophet Muhammed over a period of 23 years.
The Qur'an consists of 114 surahs (or chapters) varying in length from 3 to 286 verses.
To properly understand the teachings of Allah, Muslims say that one should refer to the Arabic text of the Qur'an
The Qur'an is the most widely read book in the world. All Muslims memorise parts of it to recite in their prayers.
Some Muslims memorise the entire Qur'an.
YVONNE RIDLEY
Yvonne's time in the hands of the Taliban changed her life forever
British journalist Yvonne Ridley was captured by the Talibans two years ago. Find out why Ridley has converted to Islam following her ordeal.
Yvonne Ridley is the Sunday Express journalist who hit the headlines when she was arrested after being sent to cover the build-up to the Afghan war.
Two years ago Yvonne was detained on suspicion of spying after going in search of a scoop disguised in a traditional burka
But it ended in disaster when she was thrown into prison and held for ten days, while the government, Yvonne's family and work colleagues tried to secure her release.
Against the odds Yvonne was set free, but her time in the hands of the Taliban proved to be a life-changing experience.
Against The Odds
Yvonne Ridley says she was 'simply doing her job' when she was seized by the Taliban near the city of Jalalabad.
As Yvonne explains, "A camera which I had hidden in the folds of my burka slipped out right into the full view of a passing Taliban soldier."
"He went crazy - cameras were banned under the regime - and pulled me off the donkey and removed the camera."
For the first six days Yvonne was held in the intelligence headquarters in Jalalabad before being taken to Kabul prison.
Her cell was very basic and the experience was terrifying. Yvonne lay on her bed inside a dirty, claustrophobic prison cell with no running water.
"Every morning I woke up, I thought 'is this going to be my last day?'" she says.
Hostage to Fortune
Although Yvonne was never physically hurt in any way, the experience was mentally exhausting.
"Although they were very nice, I just thought 'these are the good guys, the bad cops are going to appear at any time now with electrodes and torture instruments, or I'm going to be taken outside and shot."
While being held captive she kept a secret diary using the inside of a box from a toothpaste tube and the inside of a soap wrapper.
Yvonne recorded her thoughts when she was in her cell.
"They tried to break me mentally by asking the same questions time and time again, day after day, sometimes until 9 o'clock at night," she recalls.
Muslim Convert
Whilst in prison Yvonne tried to secure her release by offering to read the Koran or Qur'an. It was the start of her conversion to Islam.
Yvonne took on the Muslim faith in August 2003. As a result she's given up drinking, tries to pray five times a day and visits a mosque every Friday.
So why has a feisty war correspondent been drawn to a faith which some in the west say oppresses women?
"I started reading the Koran and it was an absolutely breathtaking. It could have been written yesterday for today."
"It was crystal clear that women are equal in spirituality, worth and education," says Yvonne.
Yvonne was brought up as a Protestant in Stanley, sang in the church choir, and was the Sunday school teacher in her village.
Today she's exchanged her Church of England upbringing for Islam and a very different set of spiritual beliefs.
Changing Places
It's not just her faith that Yvonne has changed - she also has a new employer, the controversial Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Yvonne works on their new English website, and she's hooked on the internet. "It's a really exciting 24/7 operation... if something breaks, we can put it straight onto the Internet," she says.
Yvonne believes Al Jazeera has given the Arab world a previously unheard independent voice.
Anti-War Campaigner
Yvonne's experiences in the Middle East have made her a vocal anti-war campaigner.
She started to think about the futility of war because, in her words, "These missiles can't differentiate between civilians and military targets, between a woman, a child and a soldier."
"If I can use any of my fifteen minutes of notoriety and celebrity for good, then I will," says Yvonne.
Yvonne has also changed as a person. "I think I've become more reflective and tolerant than I used to be," she concludes.
In just two years, Yvonne has been transformed from a war corespondent to a committed Muslim with a new lifestyle and a change of career.
It's been an amazing spiritual and physical journey for the North East-born journalist who finally has found her spiritual roots, thousands of miles from her country of birth.
From Durham to Dohar, it's been an amazing adventure and a fascinating spiritual rebirth.
ISLAM FACT FILE
There are two billion Muslims world-wide.
The Qur'an is the Book of Allah that was revealed to the Prophet Muhammed over a period of 23 years.
The Qur'an consists of 114 surahs (or chapters) varying in length from 3 to 286 verses.
To properly understand the teachings of Allah, Muslims say that one should refer to the Arabic text of the Qur'an
The Qur'an is the most widely read book in the world. All Muslims memorise parts of it to recite in their prayers.
Some Muslims memorise the entire Qur'an.
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